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Thomas comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong
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They had too much time to talk, if one of them was that fast. Can't help, but this technicality bothers me.
It was not said how the old man was travelling, and I doubt the horse was at a literal run. A carriage can go as fast as about 30 miles an hour on a modern road, but even in those conditions you should expect to break your carriage. On ancient roads, depending on condition, the speed limit for going "very fast" in a carriage could easily have been as low as about 10 miles per hour. If the old man was riding on an animal, or walking very fast, then he could have kept up for some time.
We at least know that the carriage wasn't moving at its top speed because at the end of the story the horse sped up.
The carriage stopped while the two conversed. Or am I misunderstanding your objection?
Non stop and extremely fast, the story says. Well must be something lost in the translation.
Lost somewhere, I suppose. It seems clear to me that the carriage stopped. Just as it would not have carried on literally non-stop for ten days, 24 hours a day. These details are not stated; they do not need to be. And at the end, the man tells the driver to drive on. If this is an imperfection in the story, it is nothing more than a hyperbolic use of "non-stop", as trifling as the extraneous "to" in the passage you quoted, which does not seem to have held you up.
Even in conventional English, "Non-stop" doesn't necessarily mean without stopping at all. The express train from New Haven to Grand Central, for example, is called express because it doesn't stop between Connecticut and New York City, though there are several stops in Connecticut and one stop in Harlem.
"Non-stop" in context could just mean that they were not stopping in any towns they passed.