These ideas were formulated from age 15 and while running at a near-top level, hanging around the best sports-doctors of our time, studying and practicing podiatric medicine for 30 years and reading a whole lot of crap from all over. You don't need to listen to me, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.
1. Stretching is a mostly a waste of time, and may very well be counter-productive. If any of you remember me from actually running with me, you'll remember I didn't stretch much unless Coach Groves was there to berate me. Now, because my performances as a PSU athlete were near the lower end of the scale of all Nittany Lions, you may disregard me out of hand. But that would be wrong. I'm pretty sure that I came very close to my ultimate top-level of performance in running. Did you?
2. Warm up should consist of low impact muscular activity with dynamic stretching only as a by-product. I have often joked that a marathon is a 20 mile run with a 3 mile warm up and a 3 mile cool down. (Actually an idea from one of my teammates. I wish I could remember who.) Probably the best warm up of all is simply to jog slowly for a while or add in a few jumping jacks like the oldest among us remember. The main goal is the slowly increase the temperature of the muscles and increase the heart rate. Just putting on my running clothes nowadays seems to do enough of that!
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