I'm 1.86m short too Although not nearly as experienced as the rest of the group here this is what i went through last year. I wanted to increase my cadence up to 180 SPM as per Jack Daniels book. So before i started with it i found that at Om die Dam HM AVG : 167 SPM , Stride 1.02m @ 5:55 Pace with 9.5cm Bounce (VO) in Race mode Birchwood HM AVG : 168 SPM , Stride 1.11m @ 5:23 Pace with 9.7cm VO in Race mode After picking up various injuries i reverted back to just running on feel. On Sunday i did Colgate and ran that at AVG : 167 SPM , Stride 1.03m @ 5:48 Pace with 8.9cm Bounce (VO) as a training run I have found that when increasing the pace to 5:00 or below my stride length increase and cadence too, for example, last months park run AVG : 180 SPM , Stride 1.25m @ 4:20 Pace BUT then you look at guys who i know have run Silver and Bill Rowan and some of them are running at 155SPM and in the same height category as us, so my suggestion is to run in whatever way is comfortable and natural for you. If that leads to injuries them tweak it a bit but as long as you not getting injured don't go changing it just to suit what other people out there say you should be doing. Case in point, look at Kajsa Berg, the Swedish runner whom came third last year at comrades, she has such an inelegant style, butcher like in fact but she is at the top tier of the sport.
