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I'm on day 1101 of running daily, on average about 7k per day, mostly on pavement, in vibram five fingers. I frequently do very slow or very short runs (think 2k) when I feel that I need it, it's all about listening to your body and noticing what's just regular wear/tear and what is injury territory. I rarely stretch, but I focus a lot on running form and making sure to mainly load muscles but not joints during running.

Not the person you asked, and I have paid attention to this. I found "Run for Your Life" [1][2] to have useful insights and tips. The biggest one for me was starting with foot landing, where the outside of the foot near the little toe hits first, it spreads out nicely to start taking body weight. Then letting the rest of the outside of the foot land until the heel touches, and then somewhat relax the calf muscle and pull the heel back and slightly roll the ankle in, so the big toe is loaded for the push back and lift off. I play around with variations and sometimes, it becomes almost effortless, almost floating along, even on hard surface.

[1] https://runforyourlifebook.com

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSIDRHUWlVo

I did a lot of auxiliary work when I was really competitive (mostly college), including weight lifting, sprint drills, dynamic stretching, hurdle drills. Generally, though, I usually just run (although this consists of a variety of running workouts). I never (literally never) do any static stretching beforehand.

In my experience, the most important thing is to make sure you build up the amount of running (quality and quantity) in a proper progression (don't do too much mileage or too much speedwork too fast).