November

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Lean over, you fall. Video guy got that right in a sense, but that doesn't translate to speed. Speed comes only from the power with which you push off as your front foot moves under your body. Forward momentum helps that process.

Efficient, fast running surely comes from a stride length that is proportional to your forward momentum/speed. We don't lean forward as we walk, and nor should we when we run.

As people have said here many times before, many of us have noticed that as we tire, we lean forward more and that only serves to slow us down and make the running harder. An upright stance with an easy forward motion without over-striding gives us an efficient, fast running action.

I don't know what your country's equivalent of "Little Athletics" is, but the first thing they seem to teach young kids here is to "run quietly". Kids (and us too) instinctively know how to do that: land on the front of your foot, and you do that by not striding forward too far. This is the most efficient running action. And at this point we run into another conundrum discussed elsewhere - modern running shoes generally don't allow you to do that!

But that's a whole other issue.