When I started running, my legs were flabby and heavy, I am ashamed to even claim I am running, the pace and stride were more like jogging. Slowly when I build up some muscle strength and stamina, the pace improved, though my stride is faster, but it remained small, slightly wider than those fast walkers, it gave me a good timing on a 5K run without feeling too tired.

As I went on for longer distance, it proves too inefficient, with the same amount of strength and stamina, I could achieve a longer distance, but because I chose short quick strides, I could only get to probably two third. Since I have the strength and stamina, it is time to take a wider step, I felt abit depressed at how bad my performance was at first few attempts, the effort to lift up your legs for a longer stride requires more energy, as I was so used to my small steps, I took a great deal amount of time to adjust and train myself to look and run like a runner.

As I learned later, longer strides does not need to over stretch yourself, it depends on your legs and the maximum comfortable stride length you can reach out, also you do not need to lift up very much in order to minimise and optimise your energy use for long distance running. I managed to run at quite a comfortable pace for the first 20km, its not that impressive but it is quite a milestone for me already. I hope to improve on longer stride, breathing, stamina, and speed will be the bottom of my list, (LOL)

Still, running a longer stride than your normal one is a good training method to build up some strength in the legs, as I seldom focus on any cross training on legs, usually I will try to stride longer and speed up a bit on a shorter distance basis.