I had six ideas for Recovery Week and, as you know, I’ve already published five of them.

Now here we are on Friday, and I’m going to tell you about strengthening, which is very important in terms of preventing injury, but maybe isn’t exactly part of my recovery.

(In some ways it is. More on that in a minute.)

The reason I’m kind of shoehorning ‘Strengthening’ in here, though, is because I did a poor job of scribbling down my notes for Recovery Week and I can’t tell what I planned on for my sixth thing.

I’ve put that note at the bottom and maybe you can help me decipher what I’ve written.

In the meantime, though, I think it’s important to realize - as I got into a little bit yesterday with stretching - how interconnected everything in the body is.

My foot issue stems directly from something not being strong enough to handle the miles I was putting on my legs.

I’m almost positive I can trace my plantar fasciitis back to May 5, 2024, when I ran a half marathon.

It was a great half for me - I ran it really well. But I started to feel the foot pain on the drive home.

Maybe there were extenuating factors - that was an unseasonably cold day for the run.

And I don’t have detailed notes on my training leading up to that run. But I suspect I did not mix in the strength training as much as I should have leading up to that half marathon.

So that’s a mistake I won’t make again.

When I’m marathon training I usually have two days a week where I’m doing 30 minutes of strength.

A few of the marathon training sessions I followed Peloton’s marathon plan for its strength sessions - I liked them because they progressed as the weeks went on and then lessened as taper time approached.

But those workouts don’t exist independent of the marathon training program, so I’ve tried to find other workouts I like that I can pop on instead and get the same workout.

To be honest, I know exactly what works for me and I could probably plan my own strength workouts:

-lunges - side, forward, reverse

-squats - goblet squats are pretty good

-hip raises

-deadlifts (particularly important for my feet, which I mentioned as part of my stretching write-up yesterday)

-single leg stability work

My worry with these workouts is unless I mix it up, I’ll get tired of what I’m doing. (And I also won’t get credit for my Peloton strength workouts…which is a silly thing but I guess I’m addicted to my little badges.)

But now that I’m writing this I think it might be a good idea for me to try my own strength routine. Maybe I should see what happens when I do a ‘Just Work Out’ session on Peloton.

The point here is, in order to have successful recovery from my runs, my legs need to be strong.

Strengthening is as important a part of recovery for me as everything else.

Almost as important as….”no frog lunch routine”?

Let me know if you know what I was going for there.