19 Mar - Finally a steady 19 miles Part 1

It appears that a run over 19 miles has given me a lot to write about, so i'm going to split this down to 2 posts.  
I had an offer this morning to run with Dennis who also needed to get his long run in today  (as part of his training for the Paris Marathon, the week before London) and as much as it would have been lovely to have his company on the run, he's unfortunately running at a much faster pace than I (as it turned out, he did his run with a 8min 42sec mile, which was over a minute per mile faster than me) which makes a big difference over that kind of distance and I would have been dust on his heels as he disappeared into the distance.  Running with others is so much more motivating though, but it can be a problem matching up running pace especially over longer distances. I've always found it useful to run with someone at a slower pace as it deters my initial inclination to run faster.  My problem is that I usually end up running the first half too fast and then generally run out of steam for the second half.  In my mind, I know I'm going to feel tired in the second half  so when I feel quite fresh at the beginning I want to take full advantage of it.  Whereas the other theory is that if you take it easy at the beginning, there'll be more energy left for the latter half.  The only run I've managed to make this 'negative' split work was when we ran in Budapest 18 months ago and that was only by seconds  -  2:13:14 for the first half and 2:12:48 for the second half


Anyway back to today's run.  A couple of hours before I set out, I took some codeine and because I was so paranoid about a stomach upset spoiling the run, I also took a couple of loperamide just before I started.  When I set off, I felt really fresh and full of energy,  so much better than last week.  It was only when I got to the 5 mile mark that my belly started grumbling and by the time I got to 6 it was not happy.  Once I'd manage to sort out the toilet, it was fine again, but the good thing about a long run is that there's lots of time to mull over any problems.  My stomach had never been a problem over the last couple of years as long as I took the codeine  pre-run, so I was trying to figure out what was different this time. I've come to the conclusion that it's probably the iron tablets I've been taking for the last couple of weeks.  I hadn't been on them when training for previous long runs, but,  I know from work that there are plenty of women that do have stomach problems with iron.  I just think that the motion of running tends to aggravate it even more.  I'm feeling so much better since taking iron, so I'd rather not cut them out completely. I think I'm just going to have to balance how I take them, ie. probably miss them out the day before my long run and maybe even stop them the week before the race.  Fingers crossed.