Does anyone take note of their stride rate? I have a stride rate of about 165 steps per minute this goes up or down buy a few if i speed up or slow down.
according to this article a good rate would be around the 200 mark which seems pretty big to me and that stays the same if going fast or slow its the stride length that determines speed rather then stride rate.
I record mine every now and again. Over the last couple of months, depending on the run, my averages go from 160 to 178 with most in the mid 170s. I do have fairly short legs being 1.61m tall so my stride length, I think, is fairly short at less than 80cms.
I don't have a cadence thingy on my watch, so I only know from music I know the beat of if you know what I mean. My natural cadence is about 150, I've found I go quicker if I increase the cadence and shorten my stride. Makes no sense at all really, except I read Born to Run where they say modern shoes cause us to over stride, and too much of the stride is in front of us when it should be behind us...the shorter stride seems easier on my Achilles too.
Once I went out with a metronome and did one KM at each of 185, 175 and 165. 185 was by far the fastest but I felt like my heart would burst...
Born to run is one of those books i always meant to read but never seem to have the time to do it, one day!
do you now try and keep that high 185 cadence practice makes perfect? or do you not care?
Gawd, I can't keep to anything close to 180! I wish I could! For a longer run I just do what feels comfortable, I guess that's around 150 or so, also I still use the plus podcasts Speed and Stamina, they go up to 165, and I find that quite comfortable. I will be back in lovely flat cool Cambridge in a few weeks, I shall play around a bit with cadence then.
When I was coming to the end of C25K I worked out my cadence from my favourite running song, 'Is That Love' by Squeeze :). It was 170 spm. So I got a metronome app and set it to 180, and this got me doing a sub-30 minute 5k, in time for my graduation.
Now Is That Cheating? 
Now i wont comment on your musical taste's! but i dont think setting a high metronome is cheating, doing it on roller skates would be cheating.
maybe its because i dont listen to music its quite low. Do you keep to that high cadence?
I've never figured out how to count my strides, but I understand that higher numbers are better. I suspect my stride rate is low.
I have no idea and cannot keep track of it. I believe that 3 per second is already a very good pace (indeed I think elite run with that strike rate...). 180 seems feasible. 200 looks a bit high speed to me. But as I said I have no capacity to count it (haven't attempted it yet).
Maybe I'll give it a go in the next few days and let you know 
I don't think it is particularly important and there is no hard and fast rule what is best either. I think I had a look a few days ago and on slow runs it averages around 142-145, on faster ones it's closer to 160. Max cadence on various runs can hit 180. It all depends on age, ability and general fitness and speed.
My natural cadence seems to have crept up recently to about 163. That's a steady, comfortable pace. If I am pushing myself I can get to about 175bpm for short periods... and only if I am hurtling downhill can I get to 180bpm. 200bpm seems very unrealistic to me!
Heart rate monitor
Heart rate training attempt two - using polar watch properly!
Cadence - Has anyone modified their cadence sucessfully?
Speeding up longer distance runs
