1 mile in 12 minutes - at Boy Scout's pace.

[Bazza1234]

How many old Boy Scouts here ??? -- Hmm, didn't think so!!

I was never a Boy Scout either - but I had heard of "Scout's pace" . Apparently invented by Baden-Powell after watching how Zulus traversed long distances in South Africa. He introduced the idea into the Boy Scouts movement - and one Scout test was to travel 1 mile in 12 minutes ( that's 7:30 mins per klm) and equates to a 10K in 75 minutes or a HM in 2hrs 35 minutes. Of course after 21 klms, if you are emulating the Zulus, you will then be expected to engage the "enemy" , so you need to have plenty of strength left!!

An interesting concept goo.gl/1yNyrg -- a more modern version being Jeff Galloway run/walk.

[Vixchile Graduate]

Yeah... Bazza the only energy i will have next sunday after 21km is eating a steak dinner with some chips and a bottle of read wine.

[gary_bart]

A Zulu emerging alive from a battle with a wound in his back would be put to death immediately.

To harden their feet, their king, Shaka, would make his warriors dance (more like leap about) on thorns. We have some really vicious thorns here. We're talking up to 4 inches long at the extreme. Before he took over, the various tribes he united wore sandals. Shaka banned sandals.

They had a gruesome custom for dealing with the dead: every body on the battlefield would be disembowelled. Turns out the idea was to release the soul of the dead warrior. The soldiers sent to inspect the battlefield under a hill called Isandlawana didn't know this and were horrified with what they saw there.

In that battle, a Zulu army, armed with spears, attacked a British regiment armed with Brown Bess muskets (I think). They massacred them (but at the cost of thousands dead). These weren't throwing spears, they were stabbing spears - sort of a like a prototype of a Roman sword with a long handle. They had to get right up close to kill someone. I suppose some of you saw Zulu Dawn, so that's old hat.

Basically the Zulus of old were quite scary people to any non-Zulu. The purpose of the Zulu run was to arrive at someone else's place much sooner than they could ever have imagined, and then kill everyone there. (War was pretty much an on-off affair, AFAIK. If there was war, it was total).

Oh just one more slightly more "runningly" fact relating to the Zulus. Because of the Zulu attitude to war, once they were on their way (normally to claim cattle you shouldn't have had) if you didn't fancy your chances of defeating them, you had to run. Even chiefs/ kings who had, themselves, adopted Zulu tactics ended up fleeing. The Matabele of Zimbabwe fled from Shaka. That's quite a long trek, but then the Ngoni of Malawi and Tanzania are from the same disruption. They moved several thousand kilometers away from the trouble (and caused all sorts of trouble of their own when they arrived). It was a bit like a human explosion (the Gaza of Mozambique are from the same refugee group). They would have all used something like the Zulu run to get from A to B (or Z).

[misswobble Graduate in reply to gary_bart]

Interesting stuff! Thanks guys

[hilbean Graduate]

Goodness! What an interesting read. Thank you!