Ahh-Haa!

So the past weeks I've been "Playing around" with my stride. For some reason I thought if I took longer strides, I would go faster. I had mixed results and my legs were a little sorer than normal, but I attributted that to just being old. Then Sunday, I ran my heart out, based on the way I felt afterwards, it should have been my best 5K time yet. However, I ended up being slower than normal and infinitely more tired and worn out. Now I was really confused, so when I posted my run on runnerplus.com, I mentioned my change in stride. One of my friends posted an article about stride and cadence. Basically, everything I was trying to do by lengthing my stride was not only inefficient, but somewhat hazardous. It ended up giving me shin splints and made both of my knees sore.

So long story, slightly shorter...
I needed to go back to shorter faster strides. Tonight I went out and ran 5K to put this theory to the test. I knocked 2 minutes off my last 5K time and I feel a bajillion times better afterwards.

Just in case anybody is interested I'll post the link. It really is quite informative.
http://www.runrichmond.com/id23.html