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Travel Times & Distances


bigdamnhero

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I’m thinking about overland travel times & distances in a medieval/low fantasy setting. (Ignoring magical transportation methods for now.) I’ve looked at a number of sources, including whatever fantasy RPGs I had at hand, and have come up with a surprisingly wide variety of answers. It's been awhile since I ran a fantasy campaign, so I thought I'd check in and see what other think.

 

1. How long can you travel in one day?

 

OK, this one seems fairly straightforward; most books specify/imply an 8-hour travel day as a baseline. That sounds about right to me between fatigue, need to make camp, find water, etc. D&D 4ed (the only D&D version I have in the house) says PCs can travel 10 hours per day, while “ordinary people” can only do 6-8; not an unreasonable distinction, but a little artificial for my tastes. (Not all my PCs are *physically* heroic.)

 

Oddly, 3ed Fantasy Hero states that mounted travel is typically limited to 6 hours per day? I’ve never seen that anywhere else and I’m not sure what the justification is. Everyone else assumes 8 hours, same as travel on foot.

 

A few books state/imply that ships can travel 24 hours a day assuming they have sufficient crew, which seems to make sense. We know galleys tended to beach and camp at night, but sailing ships should be able to continue through the night assuming they have some method of navigation, right?  

 

 

2. How fast do you go?

 

This is the part that really surprised me with just how widely sources vary on what you’d think was a pretty basic question.

 

Walking on roads/easy terrain: I can find answers ranging from 2 mph (Chivalry & Sorcery 4ed) to 4 mph (D&D 4ed). Fantasy Hero 6ed lists 3.4 mph*, but that assumes zero Encumbrance; even 11% Encumbrance slows you down to 2.2 mph, which seems awfully low to me. Based on my army & backpacking days, 3 mph with a heavy pack seems like a reasonable figure to me; you could do 4 mph for a few hours as long as you weren’t carrying much, but I wouldn’t have wanted to get in a melee afterwards. Wikipedia gives 3 mph as average human walking speed, so I feel okay with that as a base. So call it 24 miles in an 8-hour day as a baseline?

 

Mounted: Again, figures vary widely, from 3.4 mph (FH 6) to 6.2 mph (FH 3). FH6 has mounted movement at the same rate as foot movement, and again that’s before encumbrance; a 25 STR horse carrying a 100 kg rider is reduced to 2.2 mph. I have much less experience on horseback than on foot, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. There are of course numerous historical & literary examples of individuals/units on foot keeping up with mounted counterparts, but it’s usually portrayed as a fairly impressive exception to the rule. Most books give mounted movement about +1 mph faster than whatever they list for foot movement, which feels about right IMO given that Wikipedia gives 4 mph for an average horse walking speed. So if we go with 4 mph, and again assume 8 hours of traveling, that gets us ~32 miles per day as a baseline?

 

Ship: Varies by ship type of course, and obviously heavily influenced by wind & currents. But trying to look at standard sailing ships, base speeds vary from 2 mph (Pathfinder) to 6.2 mph (FH3). Obviously encumbrance is less of an issue here, and being able to go for 24 hours is a huge advantage. But I’m an infantryman from New Mexico, so I don’t know from boats…

 

 

3. Pushing It: Whether they call it a forced march or whatever, several books have implicit or explicit rules for pushing it further than that, either by going faster or staying at it longer. FH6 just leaves it all up to the GM. So how do you handle that? I’m thinking some combination of CON Rolls and LTE, but I can’t visualize the specifics. And how do you handle horses, who famously start to take BODY once you push them too far.

 

Anyway, curious to see how others handle it. Thanks,

 

* And yes, I’m converting from kph for consistency; using metric measurements in a fantasy setting never felt right anyway.

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It gets more interesting with mounted creatures.  I had to study this a bit for my upcoming Dearthwood module, to give a table of how quickly people can travel through it based on terrain and mode.  Mostly I did it as an exercise to test how big the area was (I wanted it to take more than a day to cross).

 

The travel times are a bit uncertain.  People cannot just go all day long, and as noted a horse will, if urged, run until it literally dies, but you have to stop and eat once in a while, and there are always going to be minor annoyances like a thrown horseshoe, a log in the way, a bridge washed out, etc etc.  This stuff slows or limits travel time.  

Horses are a particular area of annoyance for me.  People treat them like a motorcycle: you ride to a locaiton, jump off and go in.  No food, no care, no currying, left out to die in t he wilderness, undistracted, mindless.

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The distance between pre-motor transport towns is a good indication.

 

Around here, towns are about 10-15 miles apart - a days travel by bullock dray (heavy wagon). (Usually at the shorter end of that distance).

 

Using that guideline, a day's foot/horse travel might be twice that. With regular changes of horses you could bump that up considerably. This is travel by what passes for a road, though.

 

Wilderness travel would depend on what "wilderness" actually means in the specific context. More open and flatter country would allow greater speed than forested and hilly terrain. Then there's temperature and weather. The presence of waterways, and so on.

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I spent a great deal of time figuring this out for myself.  Researched information on the Wikipedia, asked friends who raise and ride work horses, looked at historical information about how fast armies could travel on foot, etc.  In the end I came up with a chart and set of modifiers.  You can find the results here.  I figure it is probably 75% to 80% correct.  Basically I wanted folks to get the idea that traveling hundreds of miles takes a long time.  And in fact is an adventure unto itself. 

 

My players found this out while traveling with a merchant and his small wagon train over mountains, with poor roads, and pulled by oxen.  It took forever to get on the other side of the mountain range :winkgrin:

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One common problem is that "miles/day" doesn't really cover it, as that makes it look like this is a totally linear thing. Yet even without forced marches, people tend to feel the strain after a few days. And if I've been told correctly, horses even quicker than people (i.e. over the stretch of a fortnight, there'd be little difference between the ground covered by infantry or cavalry). Mules and esp. camels fare a bit better, not so sure about pack gorillas.

 

 

On the other hand, as with any really minor stuff that only hurts when things start to accumulate, this tends to be ridiculously easy to remove with magic. "Protection vs. blisters & sore muscles, 15' radius" would be the second spell any military magician/priest learns, right after "Dispel 'the runs'".

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I should have had a troop spell like that for my War Magic section of Fantasy Codex.  Some day I'll have to do a supplement of additional ideas like this one.  It makes sense that in a world with magic, depending on its limitations, that someone would come up with a way of allowing soldiers to march further and faster, more safely.

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some marching songs from a character I had in a PAH Fantasy game on HC
this got used a bit when we needed to get some place in a hurry or evading and stealth was not an issue

 

Marching song pt 2:  Running 4", x4 Noncombat, Costs END Only To Activate (+1/4), Usable Simultaneously (up to 32 people at once; +1 1/2) (36 Active Points)

 

Marching song pt 3:  Life Support  (Eating: Character only has to eat once per week; Safe in Intense Cold; Safe in Intense Heat; Sleeping: Character only has to sleep 8 hours per week), Usable Simultaneously (up to 64 people at once; +1 3/4) (16 Active Points); Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4)

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A few books state/imply that ships can travel 24 hours a day assuming they have sufficient crew, which seems to make sense. We know galleys tended to beach and camp at night, but sailing ships should be able to continue through the night assuming they have some method of navigation, right?

Depends on wind and coast. If you are worried about reefs, running on rocks, etc., then you probably don't want to try making progress by night sailing since you can't see the hazards in the dark. In an open sea, then you'd be OK, as long your dead reckoning ability is adequate (not usually the case), the wind is fair for your desired course and neither too high nor too light (and those things tend to be seasonally related). But, frankly, open sea sailing isn't that large a fraction of most sailing voyages. Intercontinental sailing was a heroic undertaking in the early 1500s in real Earth, though it can be (and was) attempted successfully with small craft and really experienced seamen in lower tech. You really need two-masted ship technology to be able to do really long haul sailing successfully, and that's *not* a medieval tech (it is one of the signpost items that you're in early modern).

 

Real medieval single-masted boats can barely make progress into a wind.

 

For long-haul times in actual ancient history, see this.

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One common problem is that "miles/day" doesn't really cover it, as that makes it look like this is a totally linear thing.

Yep that is why I use my charts as a rule of thumb.

 

Yet even without forced marches, people tend to feel the strain after a few days.

True. And people were often much more physically active in prior times than we are today. I know my mom and her siblings were a much hardier group of people than their children are now. Their parents were sharecroppers so the kids worked the fields - by hand (plus went to school).

 

And if I've been told correctly, horses even quicker than people (i.e. over the stretch of a fortnight, there'd be little difference between the ground covered by infantry or cavalry). Mules and esp. camels fare a bit better, not so sure about pack gorillas.

My friends who own and breed horses told me that after a few days of riding a horse needs to be rested and feed very well (plenty of grain and clean water) otherwise they will collapse. And if you push a horse hard then it needs a much longer time to recover.

 

On the other hand, as with any really minor stuff that only hurts when things start to accumulate, this tends to be ridiculously easy to remove with magic. "Protection vs. blisters & sore muscles, 15' radius" would be the second spell any military magician/priest learns, right after "Dispel 'the runs'".

Oh that is a great idea! I hadn't thought of that at all.

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Horses are a particular area of annoyance for me.  People treat them like a motorcycle: you ride to a locaiton, jump off and go in.  No food, no care, no currying, left out to die in t he wilderness, undistracted, mindless.

Definitely. I remember having an argument with a fellow Firefly fan about how horses made *so* much more sense than having mechanical vehicles because they were cheaper and required less maintenance. I almost broke my keyboard I was LOLing so hard!

 

You can find the results here.  I figure it is probably 75% to 80% correct.

Great stuff - thanks! How do you handle the effects of forced marches on humans & horses?

 

Yet even without forced marches, people tend to feel the strain after a few days.

Agreed. So how do we simulate that? The END cost of movement is so low that most heroic characters are not going to rack up any LTE from just walking. (Remember, walking out of combat isn't using your full Running movement.) I like the idea of a spell to reduce the effects of long marches, but that implies there are some effects, whether mechanical or just roleplaying.

 

For long-haul times in actual ancient history, see this.

One of my players just pointed me at the same article, and I was about to link it here when I saw your post. Good stuff!

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Depends on wind and coast. If you are worried about reefs, running on rocks, etc., then you probably don't want to try making progress by night sailing since you can't see the hazards in the dark. In an open sea, then you'd be OK, as long your dead reckoning ability is adequate (not usually the case), the wind is fair for your desired course and neither too high nor too light (and those things tend to be seasonally related). But, frankly, open sea sailing isn't that large a fraction of most sailing voyages. Intercontinental sailing was a heroic undertaking in the early 1500s in real Earth, though it can be (and was) attempted successfully with small craft and really experienced seamen in lower tech. You really need two-masted ship technology to be able to do really long haul sailing successfully, and that's *not* a medieval tech (it is one of the signpost items that you're in early modern).

[nod] That makes sense. So what about sailing in something like the Mediterranean, where travel routes are well-established and an experienced sailor should know where the reefs/rocks are? Is around-the-clock sailing the norm, or the exception?

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Agreed. So how do we simulate that? The END cost of movement is so low that most heroic characters are not going to rack up any LTE from just walking. (Remember, walking out of combat isn't using your full Running movement.) I like the idea of a spell to reduce the effects of long marches, but that implies there are some effects, whether mechanical or just roleplaying.

I'm not sure whether it makes sense to simulate this (in HERO) on the "squad"/party level. It's quite likely that the stats and support are good enough that it won't matter that much, just like accounting for every coin carried. It might be more applicable for the logistics part of a mass combat systems, where you simply have some tables about miles covered per day and that deteriorates slowly. Then you could have a minor Change Environment effect as a spell that turns the progression linear.

 

Now, maybe if you're doing a sandbox grimdark Dark Sun game and decide to do that with HERO, you might apply more fine-tuned endurance rules, but I'd still go with LTE and REC reduction there (cf. cold/hot environments). Contributing factors would be climate, load, distance travel and probably CON, maybe even a skill (PS: Teamster, PS: Soldier, PS: Running While Conan Soundtrack Is Playing). I've got no good idea how one would actually turn that into a formula and/or tables, but I guess one can always peruse army manuals and historical records.

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For most FH campaigns, I don't think real world misery and breakdowns from marching would apply.  You're simulating Conan running 500 miles then beating up a sorcerer, or Lord of the Rings with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas running across a thousand miles to track hobbits.

 

But for a gritty campaign, say War Hero, yeah I could see some marching rules being appropriate.  Although, ancient history is full of stories of very well trained armies forced marching and fighting pitched battles. Caesar was pretty famous for pulling that off several times.

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Definitely. I remember having an argument with a fellow Firefly fan about how horses made *so* much more sense than having mechanical vehicles because they were cheaper and required less maintenance. I almost broke my keyboard I was LOLing so hard!

 

Great stuff - thanks! How do you handle the effects of forced marches on humans & horses?

This only came up one time in my Valdorian Age campaign. The party had found and rescued some humans from one of the last tribes of orcs anywhere. They had carefully laid out a trail full of traps and deceptions before the rescue.  They were also able to leave most of the orcs in a disabled state for a few hours (herbalist was able to create a 'potion' that would give the orcs cramps and diarrhea for hours).  Then they ran.  The players were able to stay ahead of the orcs because of the head start but the captives (being normals) could not.  Over time the orcs began to catch up.  They ran to an area where on of the PCs knew her people actively patrolled. 

 

The end result was the players being able to pick a place and time for a confrontation with the horde of orcs and being able to get help (bit of luck) from a passing patrol.  Truly epic battle.

 

I think I told everyone they started the fight with 2/3 of their END and 5 points of LTE at the start of the fight.  Why?  No rest.  Carrying extra stuff (kids and occasionally injured normal - sprains/twisted ankles).

 

In the end it was a bit of hand waving.  Except the charts helped calculate how long it would take to get from point A and B; which the players kind of knew.  And they knew the orcs would be faster than the normals.

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For most FH campaigns, I don't think real world misery and breakdowns from marching would apply.  You're simulating Conan running 500 miles then beating up a sorcerer, or Lord of the Rings with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas running across a thousand miles to track hobbits.

 

But for a gritty campaign, say War Hero, yeah I could see some marching rules being appropriate.  Although, ancient history is full of stories of very well trained armies forced marching and fighting pitched battles. Caesar was pretty famous for pulling that off several times.

 

There is the scene in the movie Zulu where the member of the Natal Native Contingent tells the British soldier that a Zulu regiment can run 50 miles and then fight a battle.  I have no idea if that is true or not.  But it makes for good 'heroic' level storytelling IMO.

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For the specific case of the Med, see that linked item, which is what firm historical records say about travel times and speeds ... that does better than anything I could say.

Right. But I was also looking for a more general rule for the Med-Analogous Sea in my world. When I have some time, I can figure out the mileages and work out rates from there.

 

PS: Running While Conan Soundtrack Is Playing

= My new favorite thing! :rockon: (Or should that be "+Xm Running, Limitation: Only While Conan Soundtrack Is Playing"? Is that a form of Incantations?)

 

Although,ancient history is full of stories of very well trained armies forced marching and fighting pitched battles. Caesar was pretty famous for pulling that off several times.

Sure. See also Napoleon's Italian campaigns, Patton in the Ardennes, et. al. But again, it's usually portrayed as something impressive that not everyone can pull off, begging the question of what's the effect that prevents the other guy's army from doing it?

 

For most FH campaigns, I don't think real world misery and breakdowns from marching would apply.  You're simulating Conan running 500 miles then beating up a sorcerer, or Lord of the Rings with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas running across a thousand miles to track hobbits.

Generally, I think I agree about ignoring the effects of 8 hours of regular marching. ("You march; you're tired; you sleep; you're fine...") But what about forced marches? The examples you list are obviously very genre, but not every PC has Conan's CON Score or Aragorn's END. What about the wizened old wizard, the pampered noble, or similar archetypes? What about the NPCs & Followers they may have with them, as in bluesguy's example? For that matter, what about the NPCs that are chasing/being chased by them? It's not heroic if everyone can do it.

 

I'm thinking something along the lines of:

  • Default walking rate on good terrain is 3 MPH for 8 hours (modified by terrain, etc).
  • Continuing beyond 8 hours requires a CON Roll at -1 for every hour past 8. Failure costs X LTE.
  • Going faster than normal also requires a CON Roll every hour, starting at 1 hour, modified by -X per additional Y MPH. Failure costs LTE and character must rest for an hour before resuming movement. Or may continue but at a reduced speed?
  • The above results are cumulative, so if you've been running for 9 hours you have to roll for both speed and time.

I'm totally making this up as I type, so let me know what you think, and what values you'd assign to the Xs & Ys. I'm looking for a balance where characters who bought up their CON & END can push it with none/minimal consequences so they feel like they get a clear benefit for those points, but even they have limits. I'm fine with liberal amounts of handwavium (as anyone who's ever gamed with me can attest), but it's be nice to have a baseline to go off of.

 

Also: I'm assuming that a character's Running score doesn't come into play much, as sprinting and good reflexes don't necessarily translate to long-term overland movement? Discuss...

 

And what about horses: maybe something similar, except there's a Riding or Animal Handler Roll involved, and the mount takes BODY at some point?

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And another thing...

I was playing around with the travel speeds in FH 6 (p388), adjusted for Encumbrance. For walking on roads/easy terrain:

  • 0-10% => -0% = 5.5 kph = 3.4 mph
  • 11-24% => -2 kph = 3.5 kph = 2.2 mph
  • 25-49% => -4 kph = 1.5 kph = 0.9 mph
  • 50-74% => 1/2 move = 2.75 kph = 1.7 mph
  • 75-89% => 1/4 move = 1.4 kph = 0.9 mph
  • 90-100% => 0

I hadn't noticed this before, but because of the way the penalties work, 25% Encumbrance (-4 kph) is actually slower than 50% Encumbrance (1/2 move). I think that explains why the low-encumbrance rates always felt too slow to me. But if we change the 11% and 25% penalties to x7/8 and x3/4, we get:

  • 0-10% => -0% = 5.5 kph = 3.4 mph
  • 11-24% => x7/8 = 4.8 kph = 3.0 mph
  • 25-49% => x3/4 = 4.1 kph = 2.6 mph
  • 50-74% => 1/2 move = 2.75 kph = 1.7 mph
  • 75-89% => 1/4 move = 1.4 kph = 0.9 mph
  • 90-100% => 0

Extending that to different terrain, we get:

 

 

Walking               KPH        MPH      0-10%    11-24% 25-49% 50-74% 75-89% 90-100%

Roads/Easy         5.5         3.4         3.4         3.0         2.6         1.7         0.9         0.0

Typical Ground   5.0         3.1         3.1         2.7         2.3         1.6         0.8         0.0

Rough Ground    3.0         1.9         1.9         1.6         1.4         1.0         0.5         0.0

Very Rough         2.0         1.2         1.2         1.1         0.9         0.6         0.3         0.0

 

 

So for a "normal" 8-hour travel day, we get:

 

 

8 Hour Walk        Km         Miles     0-10%    11-24% 25-49% 50-74% 75-89% 90-100%

Roads/Easy         44.0       27.3       27.2       23.9       20.5       13.6       6.8         0.0

Typical Ground   40.0       24.8       24.8       21.7       18.6       12.4       6.2         0.0

Rough Ground    24.0       14.9       15.2       13.0       11.2       7.6         3.8         0.0

Very Rough         16.0       9.9         9.6         8.7         7.4         4.8         2.4         0.0

 

That feels about right to me. What do you all think?

Edited by bigdamnhero
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The way horses will go until they die is tough to actually simulate in hero.  You can have them use up END until they start burning Stun, but once they run out of STN they pass out with no permanent effects.  Not every horse will do this, of course, they all have their personalities and inclinations.  Some love to run, some are lazy, some are stubborn, some are frightened, etc, etc.  Famously, Seabiscuit was lazy and bored until he had something to compete against.  In the final race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral, who was just as competative, Seabiscuit outran the bigger horse and essentially ruined him.  War Admiral was never the same, never as good.  His heart broke, they said, because he just could not outrun the little ugly horse.  They're very interesting animals, horses.

 

As to how to simulate the game little pony that runs until his heart pops, maybe an ego roll to keep going when he's out of STN and burn body instead.  With a riding roll and presence attack by the rider, bonuses can be given to the pony's ego roll, so he can keep doing it even when he'd normally stop.

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As to how to simulate the game little pony that runs until his heart pops, maybe an ego roll to keep going when he's out of STN and burn body instead.  With a riding roll and presence attack by the rider, bonuses can be given to the pony's ego roll, so he can keep doing it even when he'd normally stop.

Yeah, I agree it's tough to model with RAW. I like having the rider use Riding/Animal Handling/PRE to push the horse on. 

 

Per the Bestiary, a riding horse has 26m Running and SPD 3, which means it burns 9 END per Turn, and it has a REC of 9 as well. So the only END cost is LTE, accrued at a rate of 1 per Minute. With 40 END, it can run full-out for 40 minutes - covering just over 6km - before it starts taking STUN; at 38 STUN, that'd be a total of 78 Minutes - 12km - before it starts taking BODY. Say it runs through its 15 BODY at 1 BODY per 5 minutes? That would be another 75 minutes, bringing us to 153 minutes and just shy of 24 km before keeling over? I have no idea how close to reality that is. 

 

Of course, if we say the horse trots along at 1/2 speed (13m, 26m noncombat), the 3 END it burns per Turn isn't even enough to trigger LTE. So by RAW it can trot at 15 mph all day long...

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Per the Bestiary, a riding horse has 26m Running and SPD 3, which means it burns 9 END per Turn, and it has a REC of 9 as well.

 

 

That's a flaw in the horse writeup; almost all animals can run very fast, but not for very long.  There are some that can run a long time but its rare.  Also, almost none of them can run tactically and carefully at measured speeds, so they are using NC to get that, and shouldn't have such big run speeds.  I build my horses with fair running, then an additional boost of running that's x2 END cost, to simulate their inability to keep that up forever.

 

Naturally, some horses are better at long distance running, so they might not have that particular feature.

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The problem isn't limited to animals: by RAW a 0-point Normal (12m Running, 2 SPD, 4 REC, 20 END) can run 15 miles at a 7-minute/mile pace (100 minutes) before running out of END. That's certainly not impossible if you're in good shape and run a lot, but it's not something most people can do right out of the box. Heck for a mere 14 Character Points, a Barely-Skilled Normal with 13m Running, SPD 3, 6 REC and 25 END can maintain a 4-minute-mile pace (15 mph) for more than 2 hours, covering more than 30 miles before reaching into their STUN. Throw 1 more point into REC, and you can maintain that pace indefinitely without incurring any LTE at all...

 

The Running speeds and END costs work okay for the length of most combats IMO, but they fall apart when you try to use them for long-distance running.

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