Why does running make you feel sick?

                                   Running the Swindon Half Marathon in 2007

I’M training to run slow at the moment – and you know what, it isn’t easy!

A month from tomorrow I’ll be back to Swindon to run the half marathon as a pacemaker, although the use of the word “pace” is a bit of a misnomer.

I’m going to be running the 13-mile undulating route through the Wiltshire countryside at a gentle 10 minute mile pace with colleague, Mike Affleck, so we arrive back at the finish in a time of two hours 10 minutes.

Last year, Mike and I teamed up to lead the nine minute mile pace group, and we were just 22 seconds behind our pace time of 1 hour 57 minutes, which was pretty impressive. For those chasing sub two-hour half marathon times, the joy on their faces as they crossed the finishing line was an inspiring picture, and it will be the same story on October 9th.

The Swindon Half Marathon course is hilly in a couple of places. The race route gives as much as it takes because although there is long nasty climb between miles four and six around the village of Badbury leading out onto the Ridgeway, it’s then downhill for the next six miles.

However the testing route makes pacing at an even tempo, while holding aloft a colourful pace flag so runners around can see who you are, very challenging.

You don’t want to go too quick so that you lose runners, especially on the downhill sections when your legs are tempted to run away with you, and you have to keep at a reasonable pace uphill while occasionally fixing your eyes on your Garmin wrist watch to check the pace schedule.

To train, I’ve been running with my fiancee’s daughter who is keen to get fit. Charlie recently turned 18 and when she gets going she can run at 7min 30sec pace. I’ve been running around forest tracks and country paths pushing my son Ross in his specially-adapted running buggy and at times it has been a struggle to keep up.

But here’s the problem. We’ve been running for six weeks now but the longest interval Charlie has been able to run is two minutes. She seems to be suffering from some form of motion sickness. She’s not tired, she’s not pushing herself to exhaustion, but when we get to the third or fourth repetition she begins to feel sick.

I’m baffled. At first I thought it was because she was drinking too much water. We were only running one minute to 90 seconds with a one to two minute intervals.

I’ve checked her pace too so that Charlie was running at a gentle rate where she could talk. We’ve even looked at what she eats before running as well as the time it takes to digest. But still we have this sickness problem. She’s taken Gaviscon beforehand, and also stopped taking an iron tablet as well to settle her stomach.

In the end, I’m trying to get her to relax as she runs, and even to switch off mentally at times to focus on other thoughts – music, holidays, counting numbers. We’ve talked about mechanisms to fight the sickness when she can feel it coming on.

The frustrating aspect is that once we break through this ceiling, to get some distance in her legs and some time on her feet, Charlie will run well. She’s not exhausted, doesn’t even break into much of a sweat on our half hour sessions which amount to about three miles of running.

If anyone’s got any ideas, a quick fix and an easy remedy, please let me know.