In my town there is a local running shoe/fitness store that hosts a weekly running event. Well I decided to join the group for the first time last night, we were supposed to go about 6 miles which would have been fine since I’ve been doing most of my run training in the 4-5 mile range (I’m a 10th wk tri newbie with only 1 sprint race under my belt and no background in any of the 3 disciplines). Well to make a long story short, I had to stop to pee (I should have done that before leaving the store) and subsequently got dropped by the group and then proceeded to get lost because I didn’t know the route we were supposed to run. I ended up running 10 miles due to my detour; I couldn’t slow down and walk because the store was about to close and my keys were inside in a “key box,” so I had to run pretty hard the whole way. When I got back home I had some protein-rich food, took some ibprofen, and made sure to get 9 hours of sleep in hopes of helping my legs to recover more quickly. This morning my legs are a little sore but not as bad as I would have expected.
My “A” event for the year is in just over a week and I don’t care to injure myself before or during it. I’ve read that you’re supposed to increase running distance by about 10% per week, I just accidentally increased my distance by 100%. So my question is this: What should I do to ensure that I keep my performance level up while not overtraining my legs in the next week? Also, just for my general knowledge about this stuff, should I have done anything differently last night when I got back home to speed up my recovery?