Runner's Forum:
Am I running, walking or gliding?

Ran in my first 10K race at the weekend, finished in 45:23 which I was very pleased with.

However I have just been looking at some short videos my family took of me coming past on my last lap. I'm going reasonably quickly here (I did the last 5K in 22 minutes) but it doesn't look like I'm actually running...

My feet seem to glide over the ground without lifting up very much. My arms and shoulders are relaxed, and my head high, so that's good, but looking at my feet you'd almost think I was walking, except the strides are too long. I'm basically not picking my feet up - they are just skating over the ground.

Is this good (efficient?) or bad (wrong action?). 

Check this out:

http://books.google.com/books?id=RxKzZTvUTB8C&pg=PA371&lpg=PA371&dq=marathoners+shuffle&source=bl&ots=01SZ1H1NHj&sig=MD7ZhaElaVKG_nAgF7G6KImSXIg&hl=en&ei=fPClSbC_A9CCtwfvsPDQBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result#PPA372,M1

You might need to scroll up a little bit, but look for the subsection called Stride. 

For what its worth I got made fun of by one of my friends yesterday for having such a short stride, but I've still experienced moderate success

Many runners overstride which tends to cause injury. If someone is reaching out as far as they can when they run, they are probably forcing themselves to go higher in the air as they stretch out which means that they will impact the ground with a greater force than they would have with a shorter stride. I think this might be part of the reason why you have heard that short quick strides are better. 

Although its vague I would say the perfect stride is the longest stride you can have while maintaining a good stride rate.  What is a good stride rate? Well I cannot really answer that. Many on this forum would have you believe 180 per minute is the magic number, but personally I don't think someone should go out and shoot to hit a particular number of strides per minute. But I don't have any scientific evidence to back up my point, just personal anecdotes.

All of this is a big buildup to me saying just do whatever you find natural. Your times indicate you are a pretty decent runner, there's no reason to think that you are doing anything wrong. If you are really concerned about correcting your running, then do 4-8 really fast 10 second hill repeats at the end of your run two or three times a week. That will help you clean up your form after a couple weeks and probably help your performance out a bit due to the neuromuscular firing.