Second, we have to keep in mind the mode of literature we're reading: LOTR is a romance. As Northop Frye puts it:
OK, let's compare it to the 18-month existence of the US's Pony Express (April 1860 - October 1861).
The distance from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, was about 1,900 miles. Covered in 10 days, that meant 190 miles a day ...
But the article in Wikipedia has almost as many inconsistencies as HoMe ... 😳
"In 1860, the roughly 186 Pony Express stations were about 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 km) apart along the Pony Express route. At each station, the express rider would change to a fresh
horse, get a bite to eat, and would only take the mail pouch called a mochila (from the Spanish for pouch or backpack) with him."
"Along the long and arduous route used by the Pony Express, 190 stations were used. To maintain the rigid schedule, 157 relay stations were located from 5 to 25 miles (8 to 40 km) apart, as the terrain would allow. At each "swing station", riders would exchange their tired mounts for fresh ones, while "home stations" provided room and board for the riders between runs. This technique allowed the mail to be moved across the continent in record time. Each rider rode about 75 miles (120 km) per day."
So it appears the riders changed
horses on average every 10 miles. For
Gandalf's ride, this would have meant 34 changes of horse ...
Then there is the bit about every rider covering about 75 miles a day. To reach the required 190 miles per day, they would have needed about 5 riders per 2 days.
Ah, there's another quote belonging to the first one above:
"Riders, who could not weigh over 125 pounds (57 kg), changed about every 75–100 miles (120–160 km),
and rode day and night."
Meaning that the 380 miles (average) covered in 2 days by 5 riders were achieved in 48 hours, or at an average of 7.9 mph ...
The parallels between
Shadowfax -- who could be seen as a "hero", in a way -- and
Aragorn can be seen here:
OK, so for the sake of argument let's assume Aragorn,
Legolas and
Gimli covered those 3 x 45 leagues = 135 miles in the same time that Shadowfax ran the 350 miles. Or 2.6 times as far. Now there have sporadically been
races between ultra-distance runners (we're talking multiple-marathon distances here) and horses (with riders, obviously; no horse on its own would voluntarily do something so utterly
Homo-sapiens-daffy!). The horses did not win every
race, far from it. The Incas, like all natives of the (to Europeans) "New World", had message runners that covered huge distances in the mostly mountainous terrain of their empire. Even Aragorn as a
Ranger might not have been able to match these highly trained professional runners. Legolas is an entirely different matter. Perhaps Gimli with his short legs was the limiting factor- but then the stamina of the
Dwarves is thought to be seriously more than that of the average human.
Anyway, considering both Aragorn and Shadowfax as "romance heroes", Shadowfax does mop the floor with Aragorn with what is known today.