First off, you discredited yourself to me already by claiming to be a 200m - 1600m guy. Either you are from a region that is slow, you did one of those races in jr high, or you are not very fast on one end of that spectrum. You're probably a 25 200m with a 4:30 mile, who wants to be a sprinter but whose coach sees his potential is far better in the 16 than it is in the 2.
Next, like other reply said, the purpose of strides is not a warmup, it's for improving form, running economy, and maintaining basic speed over the summer by recruiting fast twitch muscles. You wont get faster by them, but you wont lose speed like you would by neglecting them.