Can you level Athletics by running into a wall?

[Metric Guard]

You can do that in Morrowind, but can you do it in Oblivion?

[Clever Monkey]

yes but if you swim into a rock or something it will raise even faster

[Clever Monkey]

Your athletics skill increases by 0.03 points for every second (real time) spent running, and 0.04 points for every second spent swimming. (No athletics skill is gained if you are sneaking while running).

Because you gain athletics skill whenever your character runs, you will tend to constantly (but slowly) gain athletics skill. One implication because of this is that it is very difficult to control athletics skill increases.

Tricks to increase your athletics skill somewhat more artificially include:
Leave your character running against an obstacle for a long period of time. PC users can just toggle the auto move feature (Q key by default). Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 users can tie a rubber band around the controller's left thumbstick so that the character runs constantly.
Swimming increases athletics faster than running. Try using a Water Breathing spell or enchantment, especially if you want to leave your character auto-swimming (using the same methods described as in the previous note). As Argonians have Water Breathing as a natural ability, no such spell or enchantment is necessary.
copied from
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Athletics

[Metric Guard]

Ah, it's good thing I kept the Ring of Rumare from the beginning of the game. Now I just need to find a safe lake to leave my character in. Thanks for the information!

[Clever Monkey]

Originally posted by Mute_Guardian7:

Ah, it's good thing I kept the Ring of Rumare from the beginning of the game. Now I just need to find a safe lake to leave my character in. Thanks for the information!

I usually go for a swim around the water looking for nirnroot. it goes up fairly quick and you collect nirnroot and some creatures get to die along the way.

[Connobar]

Excellent, I auto-leveled sneak like this but never thought of athletics, I just run around jumping. I must look like the farie-god catman of murder prancing about.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I used the Construction Set to modify certain parameters like doubling the XP rate for swimming, so that gaining XP from running was normal, while swimming raises Athletics XP even more than normal.

I did the same thing for Acrobatics by increasing the XP rate received for falling damage.

That way those skills are much less tedious to level up and are more controllable since you can avoid swimming and falling.

There is also a secondary XP parameter for sneaking that can be adjusted so that pickpocketing increases your sneak skill faster than sneaking.

[Clever Monkey]

bbqkitten
that is a good idea for falling damage an Pick pocket, swimmin maybe not that high for me but good idea anyways.

If I find myself resorting to swimming intoa cliff or sneaking into a wall for long periods I tend to console my game as opposed to washing dishes, shopping, eating, etc... while my character does there thing.