looking great Nem!!! As far as the stop in his step thats normal even when you run. If it looks still to much like a walk you can scale the keys down in the time line and play a little bit with the shape of the graphe editor lines.

If you scale the keys just make sure you have all the nodes in the hypergraphe select so when you scale it all the Keys scale at the same time and will speed up your whole animation. You can also add a bit of sway left to right as he steps too.

Really comming along Bud

Kurt