As day said, go "by the book" until you are comfortable with what you're doing. By "comfortable" I don't mean you can take a certain amount of steps, or you're a pro, you just simply understand what does what, and what you can and can't do. Again, as day said, using shit+space is essential for running. A good thing to try is messing around with -30 gravity (running gravity) and simply trying to do spins, mess around (nothing advanced like a cork or a straight leg flip) experiment, find out what does and doesn't work. It will definitely help you understand joint movements. If you've gotten running relatively down, but you feel stuck, change the gravity to something higher than -30, like -60 or -90, and try to run for a bit. then change it back and running should feel much easier.
The Game Is Broken - Foxy