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I've found the heel to toe drop of your running shoes can make it easier or harder to run on the midfoot. I've settled on 10mm for a while and anything lower stresses my calves and achilles a little more.
It's also worth thinking about your foot landing under your body as that is the primary reason to want to avoid heel striking, you don't want your leg and foot extended as your knee can't then help to absorb the landing impact.
When you try to change your foot strike it's easy to overdo it without realising. Better to be running with heel strike than injured from trying to midfoot strike.
Maybe try a shoe with a higher heel toe drop, it's counterintuitive because a 'flat' shoe should encourage you to mid foot strike but the extra distance your heel is stretching to reach the ground doesn't help the achilles and calf.
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Airhead
I tried this on Friday last week after reading your post.
I'd long thought that I'd been running 'wrong' because I heel strike and never seem to have a lot of lift in my legs (for want of a better description) but I've never really looked at my stride pattern before.
I did a 5k trying to land further forward on my feet. It's hard to explain but it felt like I had more potential power that I could use, but also felt more anaerobically taxing and I started to feel it in my calves before I'd even finished. Later that day, and the following day (and still today, Monday, a bit) my calves were quite painful.
I don't know if training and perservering is actually worth it, because from what I've read opinion is divided on whether heel strike is actually 'wrong'. So I'm not sure what's next.
#CSB