I’m watching the marathon on TV, and every single one of the elite runners are heel-striking.
Every one.
Makes me re-think the triathlon front-strike fetish 
i think people fail to understand the mechanics of what we are talking about (well, at least what i am talking about) when i reference midfoot strike. it’s a detail what part of the shoe strikes first. sometimes just the construction of the shoe determines that (a shoe with a lot of ramp is more likely to heel “strike”).
what matters is what is the first part of the shoe to be weighted. if the heel is depressed, if it’s weighted - and if this happens before any other part of the shoe is weighted - then that’s heel striking (according to me). but if the heel contact is incidental and the midfoot is what is weighted first (the heel may indeed be weighted after the midfoot is weighted), then that’s midfoot strike (according to me).
this is largely a function of foot plant. if the foot is planted just below the knee, that runner is likely to be a midfoot striker. if the foot plant occurs in front of the knee, that’s likely a heel strike.
another data point is runner height. short runners can’t physically turn their legs over fast enough, and require a longer stride relative to their height. while i don’t know for sure if this means height informs foot plant, but it seems intuitive that it might.
Agreed, im 6’ 2" with a size 14 i think height has alot to do with it. i have a hard time toe striking and really have to work on a mid foot strike, where heel strike just falls into place with no thought involved(for me). I’ve gotten alot better and have a mid foot strike but thats after 2 years of running under my belt, but when i get tired i almost always fall back to the heel.grrrrr!
i think the killer app here is not where you strike. it’s your foot plant. if you plant just below your knee, you’re good. in front of your knee, not good. esp somebody your height. the problem here is that certain companies - asics as an example - they’re the big oil of the shoe industry. they have an investment in the status quo, and the status quo is overstriding. they make shoes for overstriders. if you make products for what people do, instead of what people ought to do, then you have a built-in bias against any change in behavior, even if that change is beneficial for both your customer and for the clan at large.
i don’t want to make it seem that asics is the equivalent of big tobacco, asbestos and oil, but, when you dig your heels in (pardon the pun) and champion only the science that seems to validate your point, then, that’s the corporate behavior i’m talking about.
worry about foot plant. basically, i’m asking you to chop your stride a bit. imagine someone is running right in front of you, and it’s a cross country race, they’re wearing xc spikes, and you don’t want to get spiked.
now, this sort of running comes at an aerobic cost. just as riding with a higher cadence than is natural, when you first come to cycling, comes at an aerobic cost. but there’s a benefit to that faster cadence - running in particular - once you up your fitness to the point where you can integrate economy-of-motion into your running dna.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading on the subject and from what I understand the main thing in proper run technique is to focus on body position (hips forward and the lean), more bend in the knee on landing and trying to be light (starting the lift before the foot hits the ground) and staying relaxed.
Below is a link that Desert Dude posted in a diff thread that I found really interesting.
Basically saying that the focus should be on what’s going on above your ankles and however your foot lands is how it lands (leave it relaxed). Whereas the tendency for people who are new to the concepts of run technique is to focus mainly on how their foot is hitting the ground.
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2007/09/running-technique-part-iv-running.html
Just a slightly different way of thinking about it which I found interesting and thought I’d mention. I’ve been focusing on foot landing, but I much prefer the idea of ignoring it and getting the rest of the body right.
I just ran 5 miles with the challenged athletes…no heel striking. The female elite I crossed paths with was going way too fast for me to discern what her foot mechanics were.
Natural selection. Elite runners that get to that level as ‘heel strikers’ (if in fact this is actually what they’re doing) have done so despite their mechanical form, not because of it. What you don’t see is the 80 million other people that end up on the couch from runners knee, stress fractures, and other ailments often exacerbated by the cushy, torquey elevated heel trainers and over-striding style.
Run light on your feet with low heel-toe drop shoes and the rest will take care of itself. Kenya is onto something.
I kind of get the impression that the focus these days is being put in the wrong place. That it isn’t so much what part of your foot hits the ground first, but where your foot lands relative to your hips, how bent your landing knee is and how high your recovery kickback.
Like swimming, it seems that the key components of going fast can be found in all elites (with some variations but I doubt any elites look like your random crappy jogger).