I run in dreams. Good and bad. One of my favourite dreams start with me running, and it crescendos towards a feeling of effortlessness. The ease of my stride becomes complete, rarely and barely do I have to touch the ground to continue propelling myself forward. The few times that I do have to make ground contact it is as if my forefoot merely licks the ground and I experience something akin to almost-flight.

It is not as if I'm weightless as much as having an unbelievably elastic Achilles tendon that allows me to bound ahead, completely and utterly free. With nothing to impede me.

In nightmares, if I have to run, I'm not as swift.

Interesting. When I have one of those dreams I start running on all fours. Which is weird because I could never run like that in real life. Although I tried to repeat the movement when I was in the sea, once, and it kiind of worked, in that I could propel myself forward, except I had to be underwater.

Now that I think of it, I've never had a dream where I can't swim and I dream of swimming very often.

Maybe you could learn. Animal locomotion is pretty big on YouTube.

I can run in dreams, but more agile motions fail me: jumping over a small fence, fighting someone. Then it's like either there are lead weights attached to my feet, or my arms and legs are like those of rag dolls. Don't respond to my commands well. Ironically, flying is much easier.

I've had this exact dream and it's one of my favorites as well! It feels like bunny hopping in source engine games.

My assumption why in my dreams running feels hard like your legs are made of led is because of the paralysis we suffer when dreaming. Like I want to run but some subconscious things is signaling that your legs are blocked so I get this sensation.(I had similar experience with attempting to open my eyes n dreams and feeling that they are glued or hard to open/keep them open)

Interesting I run in my dreams quite often. I didn’t know some people couldn’t. However in my dreams I can’t really punch, all punches feel like they have no “weight” to them if that makes sense.

More likely it's because your body is semi paralyzed in sleep, so your dreaming brain notices that your legs aren't moving.