I took Wednesday off from running and did some crosstraining. I still was having some issues with soreness on the outside of my knees after the long run, so decided to focus alot more on core exercises, abs, glutes and legs. It may still be an issue of my body getting used to the additional miles, but I want to make sure that it is not a case of my quads out-developing faster and causing my leg to perform oddly.
Yesterday, I went on a nice and easy jog at a slow pace. Basically just scheduled to get out there and run some easy miles. Nothing overly tough.
2 miles easy jog
Today is another off day for me on the running to rest or cross train. I may just give the legs a little more rest time and take a full day off, depending on how I feel later.
Tomorrow I am scheduled for a tempo run. 5 miles total, 1 mile warmup and 1 mile cooldown and then 3 miles in the middle at a fast but sustainable pace. Tempo runs as far as I understand it are supposed to be the fastest pace that I can keep up for 1 hour (even though I'll cover 3 miles in about half of that time). The 8 min/mile or 9 min/mile paces I sometimes reach on my intervals are way too fast for me to sustain for an hour, I am not in that good of shape yet. I'll probably find the time somewhere around 10:30 min/mile or so I am guessing.
My wife and I were talking and considering taking part in a weekly 5k race tomorrow morning that one of the large local running clubs do every Saturday. 5k would be right about perfect for my 3 mile tempo run, and I would just simply not treat it like a race (go all out). I'd just pace myself appropriately, but it might be fun to check this out and meet some other runners in the area too.
Alot of this probably depends on the weather though as we're supposed to get another 14-15 inches of snow this weekend.