In a study (if you can call it that) I did in college for a class called Mathematical Models, my partner and I worked out a plan to find out just how fast most normal persons walked. Throughout my primary education (grades 1-12), all the textbooks listed the walking speed of humans as being 4 mph, or about 5.867 fps (mph = miles per hour, fps = feet per second).
We measured a section of sidewalk (2200cm IIRC) between the pressure seams, then timed about 5000 persons (as many different persons as possible) walking that distance. Persons we felt were walking faster (in a hurry thus purposefully walking faster) or slower (moseying), we did not time. We did our best to time persons who "seemed" to be walking at their "normal" walking pace. Of course, this was entirely subjective (we were not REQUIRED to be objective, but should try best), since we had to make our best "guess" at what appeared to be a "normal" walking pace. Another problem we had was that we were using the metric system for our measurement and had to convert to the screwed up American measuring system. The most major areas of error were our judgment of when to start/stop the timing when crossing the pressure seams, and judgment of persons walking normally.
When we averaged all those walking paces, we found the average walking pace was about 4.4328 fps, or about 3.022 mph. After this study, if you can call it that, I changed the Base Movement Rate (BMR) in all RM flavors to 40 feet per round (4 fps, 2.727 mph). This worked much better for me as GM since the 40 could be broken down into 10, 8, 5, 4, 2, and 1 second rounds without having ugly decimal portions.
The current BMR for the RMUbv2 is 20 feet per 5 second round, or 4 fps. I find this much closer to "realistic" than in previous versions of RM. I also modified the Pace Multiplier system so that a person running a 100m Dash would need a Pace Multiplier of about ×8 to equal Usain Bolt's world record of 9.57 seconds (Or is my memory failing? Too lazy to look up...).
Perhaps one day I shall look for this system on one of backup CD/DVD, polish it up, and post it, or put it in the Vault. Right now, I just usually wing it since I kind of have it memorized since writing it up.
rmfr