I'm not the voice of experience here (obviously), but I'm built like Urlea (weird!!! I'm 5'4" with a 27" inseam, too!) and also naturally have a pretty short stride. I'm also working with the concepts of Chi Running as I get back into this and they basically say that a shorter stride is ok. If you stride out in front of you, that just means more heel strike, further in front, causing not only more impact, but also actually slowing your forward momentum forcing your legs to work even harder. I try to strike mid-foot (for my foot injury problem) and thanks to Chi Running, I'm also trying to strike closer to below my body and not out in front.

What this means is that until I learn how to effectively rotate my hips (without rotating my upper body) so that I can lengthen my stride behind me, then I'll be taking shorter steps at a faster cadence. On Monday, when I ran my last interval, I wanted to match my cadence to the song I was listening to. In order to do that, I had to lengthen my stride to slow it down but still maintain my overall pace. It was like a huge A-HA moment! All of a sudden my hips naturally rotated, my legs felt the stretch and I was easily maintaining my pace with less effort. I can't wait to run again tonight to try it again. My point is that if you feel the need to lengthen your stride, you might want to try lengthening it behind you instead of in front of you.

Or, you might want to read Chi Running to get the REAL explantion instead of my half-assed version!