Fourteen months ago, my left foot stopped working and starting dragging on the floor. Within a week of the first pain and numbness that accompanied the floppiness, I was diagnosed with a herniated disc and went under the knife to try to restore function to my leg. After a straightforward surgery, I spent 2 months keeping my back straight as a board and lifting nothing heavier than a gallon of milk.
This was the least inactive period of my entire adult life, even moreso that when my daughter was first born, and in two months I lost quite a lot of fitness and muscle mass. In February, I skied again, but for the remainder of the season I tread carefully, threatened by a risk of reherniation. During the summer, I restored general fitness doing all-purpose gym work and whatever kind of cardio sounded fun. As the weather cooled, I wanted a structured training plan to prepare for ski season so that I could enter a winter of backcountry skiing and ski patrol work in good form.
