In the U. S., it is common to count off one second of time with "one million one" (usually in sequence: "1 MM 1, 1 MM 2,..."). And if one desires to be accurate in the counting of time, one will say that at about a conversational pace. IOW, a commonly used method of estimating time says that conversational pace is closer to 180 wpm. Even considering the two monosyllabic words in this example, it sure as hell ain't 60 wpm.

EDIT: a quick DDG search on "conversational english words per minute" indicates an almost universal agreement of somewhere in the range of 140-180 wpm, as with parent's Google search.

That's 240 syllables per minute. Is speaking really so skew towards short words?

The average number of syllables per English word is ~1.4. For an alternative perspective, 71.5% of all English words are monosyllabic, and 19.4% are bisyllabic.

Your post averages 1.69 syllables per word; this one is 1.86. There's no way the conversational average is higher than two.

Conversations are back and forth which reduces average speeds unless you ignore these pauses.

In the area of the US I currently live in, I believe one word per second would seem unreasonably fast to a local.

And don't put more than 10 or 15 words in a group without a significant pause. And complete thoughts shouldn't probably exceed 60 or 80 words if you don't want funny looks.