I'm gonna post an update, though I doubt it'll be read. Maybe more for my own reference for down the road.
Having heard some pretty wise counsel in this thread, and wanting to test out a few things of my own, I went out for my every-other-day run at lunchtime today. Though I'm not entirely convinced yet, the Maffetone notion of a slower heart-rate effort intrigues me, and since lots of you have told me to take it easy and slow down, I thought this method would be a good guide to helping me keep it slow. So, after a decent warm-up with some form drills and bf walking, I headed out on some mixed pavement, focusing on keeping my effort slow and my HR to within a few beats either way of my Maffetone number.
Well, the first thing I noticed was that, although my cadence was a little less than 180, I was definitely taking shorter strides, and I felt as if I was landing just a wee bit lighter on the forefoot, transitioning easily to the mid, and then just barely touching my heels before the foot lifted. My sense was that my torso and hips were just a bit forward of my footfall, and my shoulders felt relaxed and down, while I was very conscious to keep my head lifted. The course I ran had a slight downhill grade at the beginning, then a very short uphill near the end of the first mile, so I repeated the loop a second time. My goal wasn't to run 2 miles, but rather to run for about 25 minutes, then cooldown for another 15 by walking easy.
I ran S-L-O-W, first mile split was 12:52 and the second was 12:29. But when I finished, I felt pretty damn good, and my feet felt good too. No blisters, just a bit of heat under the ball of my left foot (so, some imbalance is at work that I need to work on).
I'm saying all this because I want you all to know that your input is truly helpful and appreciated. This was without a doubt the best run so far in my early bf days. The biofeedback of the HR monitor and trying to keep my HR low really helped in keeping my pace from getting away from me, which in turn kept my feet under me, my strides shorter, and my form better. So, I'm thinking that this is a good way to go for me at this stage. Slow definitely makes a difference here in the early days.
To all of you who took the time to comment -- thanks! I'm feeling just a wee bit "less stupid" these days.