TFT:ITL Page 35; under: Weight Carried

[Terquem]

Every year in the spring, summer, and fall I hike up Baldy Mountain in Idaho with my wife. I take a light back pack, just a few snacks and plenty of water, a first aid kit, some extra socks, and some small incidentals. It takes us about three hours to reach the Round House restaurant.

I've never run up that trail, but I have been passed by people who do...

some of them wear back packs while they are running up that trail (it is a rise of about 5,000 feet from the Lodge at the base to the top)

there is definitely something wrong with those people.

[zot]

Originally Posted by Terquem

Every year in the spring, summer, and fall I hike up Baldy Mountain in Idaho with my wife. I take a light back pack, just a few snacks and plenty of water, a first aid kit, some extra socks, and some small incidentals. It takes us about three hours to reach the Round House restaurant.

I've never run up that trail, but I have been passed by people who do...

some of them wear back packs while they are running up that trail (it is a rise of about 5,000 feet from the Lodge at the base to the top)

there is definitely something wrong with those people.

They're neo-TFT characters who can buy talents with XP. You're a classic TFT character who can only use IQ points.

[JLV]

For whatever it's worth, I'll offer some personal experience here:

Back in my misbegotten youth, I was a light infantryman. The "light" refers to the fact that we were straight leg units, not mechanized. Under what was called "full load," we carried roughly 60 lbs of personal equipment (all of us did) plus whatever else they wanted to load us down with (butt plates for 81mm mortars, boxes of extra ammunition, Dragon AT missiles, rolls of barbed wire, mines, that sort of thing) for a grand total of somewhere between 80 and 100 lbs of gear we carried. While it slows you down from regular march speed, after you get used to the weight and learn how to best distribute it in and around your body (Load Bearing Equipment goes a long way to helping in this regard), it actually doesn't slow your foot movement all that much; we still managed to cover a minimum of 20 miles per day, even loaded down like that. We couldn't have launched a real hell-for-leather attack after that, but we could have dug in, defended ourselves and been ready to attack first thing in the morning. (When we weren't loaded down like that (that is, under "combat load"), we could cover our 20+ miles per day and still be in good condition to attack at the end of it, but either way, we covered the distance.)

Having said that, running was completely out of the question. We could trot for brief distances (to get under cover and the like), but no one was running with that kind of weight on us -- and perhaps surprisingly to most civilians, while not even proximally the equivalent of Olympic athletes or anything, we were in very good shape in the Light Infantry. We had to be, since we were expected to get their under our own power most of the time, and fight when we did so. So I'd say that would be a relevant data point for this discussion.

The fatigue definitely built up faster under "full load" than it did under "combat load" (just our personal and team firearms, and some extra ammo), but it wasn't incapacitating -- when I was 18 and in good shape. Nowadays (40 years later), I couldn't even stand up under that kind of load... ;-)

[Skarg]

JLV, so for TFT combat MA purposes, do you recall whether there were faster unarmored runners in your unit than others? Do you think that unequipped, you guys trained run faster than most people, so you'd say you had the running talent?

And mainly, do you think that if there were fast unequipped runner soldiers with average unequipped runner soldiers, and you loaded them with 2-3xST (so for ST 10-13, 44 to 85 pounds), would the encumbrance tend to equalize them, or would the good unequipped sprinters be faster running short distances than the not-so-good unequipped sprinters?

:-)

[JLV]

Definitely there were individual differences. I was one of the faster runners when unburdened, and one of the slower ones when burdened -- that had to do with the fact that at 18, I weighed about 125 lbs dripping wet (by the time I left the infantry a couple of years later, I weighed 165, pretty much all muscle). One of my best friends was a man named Stambaugh -- he was about 6.5 feet tall, and had muscles in his earlobes (very smart guy, though) and oddly enough he and I got teamed up a good deal. We actually made a good team -- I could go places and do things he couldn't and vice versa. (Plus, I was a better shot -- I was the platoon "sniper" for the entire time, but he was a really good guy to have on overwatch.)

As far as training went, we focused much more on endurance than we did actual speed. No one cared about setting a 4-minute mile pace, we just wanted to be able to cover the distance. We pretty much ran a minimum of 10 miles per day in garrison (in combat boots, back then -- they went to sneakers after I left, I heard).

And, to answer your last question -- that was kind of our experience (and, in fact, the outcome we trained for); we all tried to run about the same pace with the same load. Some found it easier than others, but we all got there over time.

Actually, that raises a good, but technical, point: "running" as a skill, depends on the kind of training you do. Usain Bolt trains for speed more than endurance (though he gets some of that as a by-product, I'm sure). A marathoner trains for endurance and gets some speed as a by-product. In neither case is the by-product as great as the primary training goal. I don't think this is something that is adequately addressed in TFT (though maybe it's too nit-picky for TFT, too); perhaps Running would be the speed skill, and Endurance would be the endurance skill.