Crackle... Fizzle...

A couple nights ago, I was laying down and my knee was a little achey. Sometimes when it feels like this, I grab the kneecap and bend my leg back and forth until my knee pops. But this time when I tried that technique, my knee didn't pop. Instead, I felt and heard an awful crackling noise. Yuck! So I did what any prudent athlete would do... I popped a Tylenol and went to bed. 

Speaking of sleep. I've been sleeping great lately. But not late. For some reason, since I started this garden center job, my internal clock has been set to wake me up around 6:30 every morning. There's absolutely no need for this since the earliest I have to be at work is 9:30. So these early wake-ups, combined with all of this physical activity, has left me exhausted. I'm starting to fizzle. Today I took a day off and I'm hoping this helps. 

Before our long-run this past weekend, the coaches talked to us about using energy gels. From what I've read, you are supposed to slurp/eat one every 45 minutes. Of course nobody in our pace group had energy gels and after about an hour of running, we simultaneously began to run out of energy. It was the first run that became challenging to finish. However, we did finish. 6 miles and 1 hr 24 minutes. This week I'll be trying a PowerBar gel packet. I'll let you know how it goes.