John. I like your explanation. This is how I ran from age 12 to 25 when I ran track, cross country and then short course tris. Then I started doing Ironmans at age 25 and started the bogus heal strike routine and constantly had nagging injuries. Back to the way I ran in my youth using pose in the last 18 months at age 37 and now feel great again. Go figure. I start running the way nature intended me to and things work fine. I've never seen kids running around bare foot heal striking.
As for the original question on calf soreness, if you use the mid foot strike purely for shock absorption and gradually lowering your body's weight onto the supporting foot (kind of like the ball to heal strike when walking down stairs) and don't worry about the push off and just roll off your foot as the forward component of gravity pulls you forward (assuming you lean from the perpendicular at an angle theta, this force of gravity is (9.8m/s**2)*sin(theta) ), then you get a component of gravity pulling you forward rather than your calves having to push you forward. Hopefully I have not been too complex explaining this. Much easier to teach in person or with a picture. The way I teach kids how to get the right position on XC skis is to have their friend put their hand out straight at chest level and then have them lean into the the friend's hand pushing with their chest. This has to be done without a bend at the waist, just at the ankle. It is not a big lean, just very subtle feeling of falling forward. Works on run as well as XC skis. If you do this, the calf soreness should be eliminated. This is how our track coach taught us to run in the early 80's.
Dev
As for the original question on calf soreness, if you use the mid foot strike purely for shock absorption and gradually lowering your body's weight onto the supporting foot (kind of like the ball to heal strike when walking down stairs) and don't worry about the push off and just roll off your foot as the forward component of gravity pulls you forward (assuming you lean from the perpendicular at an angle theta, this force of gravity is (9.8m/s**2)*sin(theta) ), then you get a component of gravity pulling you forward rather than your calves having to push you forward. Hopefully I have not been too complex explaining this. Much easier to teach in person or with a picture. The way I teach kids how to get the right position on XC skis is to have their friend put their hand out straight at chest level and then have them lean into the the friend's hand pushing with their chest. This has to be done without a bend at the waist, just at the ankle. It is not a big lean, just very subtle feeling of falling forward. Works on run as well as XC skis. If you do this, the calf soreness should be eliminated. This is how our track coach taught us to run in the early 80's.
Dev