Well, I dunno for sure, but my size 11 boots are dang near a foot each, and it isn't a big trick to keep a foot of space in between 'em. So 5 paces equals about 15 yards, plus or minus whatever fraction of an inch is left off 12 inches from size 11 Red Wings, or, 45 feet. Wrong. 5 X 3 = 15 not 45.
Ted, by your calculations each of your strides is 9 feet. I do not think so. If you had those legs you would be one of the greatest NBA players making millions. You just flunked math 101, conversions of feet to yards and back. Each yard is three feet and it takes three feet to make a yard. 15 yards is 45 feet. So unless you have a nine foot stride, five strides is not enough to cover 45 feet. You would need seven feet between boots. 1+7+1=9
A stride is near a yard in distance, not nine feet, which is three yards. By your example you would cover an entire football feild in just over eleven strides. A pro running back has a hard time averaging much over five feet per stride when running. Watch one running down the feild and you will see that it takes him about two running strides per five yards.
I know that some people can broad jump over 20 feet but we are not into that group. I understand bad backs and getting older. A ten foot wide ditch makes us look for a crossing down the way.
This all could have been advoided if our Founding Fathers had adopted the metric system along with the decimal money system. Blame it on Franklin and Jefferson. Those pecks, pints, bushels, feet, inches, yards, pounds and ounces get to be right much a pain to convert sometimes.
It would be much easier to do metric. Then I only need a half meter pattern at 15 meters and a meter pattern at 30. See how simple that is.
