Physio, Rest, or something else?

GoFaster - 2009-08-11 6:40 AM This past Saturday, my training partner and I did some intense (for us) hill climbs, in preperation for the Muskoka 70.3.  When we ride together we always push each other fairly hard, and did so on the hills.  With one hill to go and about 60km into the ride, both my quads suddenly cramped up and felt ready to seize.  We pulled over and I tried to stretch them out, with the right felling much worse than the left. 

After that, we skipped the final hill and just took it easy for the 10km home.  But then went for a short run - again, we pushed and I ran Sprint race pace for 5km with my right leg feeling like it was going to seize with about 1-1.5km to go.  It didn't, and I finished the run. 

But I'm an idiot.  I'm on day 3 of a very sore right quad (the muscle about the size of a hand, just above the knee - don't know what this is called).  I swam yesterday, ande since I don't really kick the legs was fine.  I tried 20min on the trainer last night just to work it out a little, but if anything this just aggravated things even though I had minimal resistance.

So - I'm less than 2 weeks out from a Sprint race, and less than 5 weeks from the Muskoka 70.3, and I want to get better as fast as possible, but can't afford to completely stop training.  I don't know what to do.  If it was early in the season I'd just take a whole week off, and rest, but I don't feel I can do that at the moment.

I'm open for suggestions - I'd also appreciate any input why I may have suddenly cramped when this has never occured before.  Nutrition was basically the same, heat wasn't a factor, distance wasn't new, the only real change was that we really pushed the hills.

The final key in this long, convulted post - I want to make sure this doesn't happen again, especially on the 1/2.