Excellent!
The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after an MIT fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, Oliver R. Smoot (class of 1962), who in October, 1958 was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. One smoot is equal to his height (five feet and seven inches -- 1.70 m), and the bridge's length was measured to be "364.4 smoots plus one ear". Smoot repeatedly laid down on the bridge, let his companions mark his new position in chalk or paint, and then got up again. Eventually, he tired from all this exercise and was thereafter carried by the fraternity brothers to each new position. Everyone walking across the bridge today sees painted markings indicating how many smoots they are from the Boston-side river bank. The marks are repainted each year by the incoming associate member class (similar to pledge class) of Lambda Chi Alpha.
The markings have become well-accepted by the public, to the point that during the bridge renovations that occurred in the 1980s, the Cambridge Police department requested that the markings be maintained, since they had become useful for identifying the location of accidents on the bridge. The renovations went one better, by scoring the concrete surface of the sidewalk on the bridge at 5 feet and 7 inch intervals, instead of the conventional six feet.
So instead of running 5 miles at Bonneville, now it can be 4,728.35821 smoots
