Diabetes and Exercise While Traveling

I am out of town until the end of the week. In one sense, it's always fun to get out of town, especially when one travels to an exciting location. I happen to be traveling some where reasonably interesting, so I have that going for me. In another sense, traveling is always and everywhere a factor for diabetics to explore and account for.

Being somewhere new means sleeping in a strange bed, waking up and going to bed according to a new schedule, eating foods that are available as opposed to familiar, working out when and where possible. The diabetic's routine is completely disrupted at pretty much every imaginable level.

I do not dread this as much as some diabetics. I find new places somewhat exhilarating, provided I can find a gym and reasonably healthy food. These days, the former is easy, but the latter can be a real challenge. Today for lunch, for example, I went to McDonald's. Of all available options, McDonald's was the most predictable, even if not the healthiest. Sometimes predictable is better than healthy. I doubt I will repeat this choice tomorrow, however.

So what advice can I offer fellow athletic-diabetic travelers? Not much beyond common sense, I'm afraid. Here are a few tips that I have found useful.

Ignore Any Changes in Time Zone

Within reason, you should try to stick to the same time schedule you are used to. If you're traveling two or three time zones over, keep your watch set to your own "normal" time zone, and wake up at the same time, go to bed at the same time. If you're traveling for work, this may be prohibitively difficult, but it is not impossible. You may get some funny looks, but you will be glad in the long run. Sticking to your regular schedule mimizes the impact on your your body.

Make Use of the Hotel Gym

This is kind of a no-brainer. Hotel gyms suck, it's true, but they exist for a reason. The reason they exist is because many of us have to travel from time to time and having the opportunity to do something other than sit in planes, trains, automobiles, meeting rooms, etc. is vital for our psychological and physical wellbeing. For diabetics, this is true to the extreme. Your body will thank you for not cooping it up in a suit all day and drinking too many cups of coffee.

Psychologically, you will benefit from the motivation required to actually work out. The temptation to let your workout slide is almost too much to resist - believe me, I feel it, too. If you overcome that temptation, you feel strong, healthy, attractive, and accomplished. This is a huge boon for your psyche. If you're traveling for work, this will enable you to work better. If you're traveling for pleasure, this will allow you to capitalize even more on your beachside antics or your enjoyment of the local nightlife.

People just feel good when they do good things for themselves! So avail yourself of this opportunity. You'll thank me later.

Buy Your Food in Advance and Keep It In Your Hotel Room

This is probably the best piece of travel advice I can offer anyone, and not just diabetics. When you get to your destination, go immediately to the grocery store and pick up some breakfast and lunch foods. Keep them in your hotel refridgerator, and prepare them first thing in the morning. You will end up with something more cost effective and much healthier than if you have the diner breakfast, convenient lunch, and fancy dinner.

For diabetics, this will allow you to stick to a regular food routine despite having many other aspects of your daily routine ruined.

So, you're saving money, you're eating healthier, and you're keeping your BG under control. What's not to like about this?

Best of all, you will - believe it or not - prove to be the envy of your friends and/or colleagues when you show up for lunch with a fantastic homemade sandwich, cup of yogurt, and fresh vegetables, while they are stuck with some greasy potato-hewn substance made with too much salt and oil. You will be seen as healthy and also a good planner. Makes for a great conversation piece, too.

Well, those are my tips. What works for you? Let me know in the comments section of the blog.

Let The Hypocrisy Begin

I'm out of town today. During my drive out of town, I switched on some good old-fashioned conservative AM talk-radio, for kicks. I caught some quasi-conservative Ottawa-area radio host, followed by Glenn Beck, followed by Rush Limbaugh. (Hey, it was a long drive.)

So far, everyone is lamenting the downgraded credit rating news. S&P seems to have deflated North America's collective ego. What I think is happening is that everyone has been caught in what they know to be a lie. You can't spend your way out of a recession. You can't just sign a bill that says the government will run health care and expect all the money to just magically materialize out of thin air, somehow. You can't just wage a 30-year war against the various peoples of the Middle East and expect to have unlimited funds with which to do this.

The spoiled, rotten children of US political punditry are now demonstrating all the class and dignity of a four-year-old child who has just been told he cannot have a chocolate bar at the grocery store.

The really funny thing about all of this is observing the extent to which the pundits are completley hypocritical. Some nice examples:

• The Canadian host spoke at length about how Canada was too far in debt, and the size of its government needed to shrink... and then promptly called for greater military spending.
• Glenn Beck predicted race riots in the near future, in the United States, and part of his reasoning was that he expected people to start blaming white people for something. (Get it? He's inciting racial conflict in an attempt to warn against racial conflict. QED!)
• Rush Limbaugh repeated ad nauseum that Barack Obama has been systematically "engineering" the demise of the country, using - among other things - irresponsible levels of spending; But Limbaugh of course supports American wars whenever and wherever they take place.. unless Clinton did it... or whatever.

I mean, no one can really even keep track of this stuff anymore. It doesn't make any sense. This is precisely why I started Stationary Waves in the first place. What all of these jokers are lacking is a consistent moral philosophy governing their thoughts.

I have said before that political parties don't have ideologies. They are basically soulless, soul-sucking entities hell-bent on power.

What I heard today demonstrates that well enough. But you should hear these guys when they talk about "a world without America at the helm." I mean, if that doesn't give the whole game away, I don't know what does. These guys want "America" to control the entire known universe.

What we need is a little more libertarianism. Power is for dictators. Peace and free trade is the only lasting form of social organization.

An Optimist's Take on the Down-Grade

This is what the US government doesn't want you to know about their downgraded bond rating: The economy of the United States is entirely independent of the federal government's bond-rating status.

We are the people. We do not require federal funds to have a healthy economy. If we want a healthy economy, all we need to do is come up with ideas, produce them, sell them, and improve our conditions.

Sometimes I think that some of us have effectively "out-sourced" our economy to the federal government. What it says, goes. If we want jobs, we ask Gub to do something to "create" them. If we want better access to health care, we ask Gub to pass regulations that "provide" it to us. If we want to buy a home, we ask Gub to offer us a preferred lending rate. We need to stop this insanity.

Look, this is really good news. It's a good thing to know that the US federal government can effectively collapse, and we'd all be okay, economically speaking. It's a good thing to know that no matter what kind of games they play on Capitol Hill, all any of us really needs to do is keep producing valuable resources and bringing them to market. We don't need those jokers. They can't really hurt us unless they resort to despotism.

Despotism is a credible threat in the short run, but in the long run the American people will never go for it. They will reject it completely. This is why I am not too concerned about that. But Gub's constant encroaching on every aspect of our lives is getting exhausting. And frankly, we are the ones to blame for that. We honestly believe that it's up to Obama and Boehner to "fix the economy." Hogwash. You hold the key to the kingdom in your very hands, if you will but use it.

Let the federal government's ability to take on debt completely collapse. We don't need it. Our economy is in our own hands. That's good news.

Friday Reflections 2/2 : Workout Plan Going Forward

My Injury

After giving my leg some good rest, yet still occasionally feeling pain in my calf while working out, I am starting to believe that there is a hefty  psychological component to my injury. A minor muscle tear should only take a few weeks to heal. I believe I've reached the point where my leg must have healed, and yet here I am nursing it on the stationary exercise bike at the gym every day.

The reason I fear I may be imagining some of the pain is because this sort of thing has happened to me before. Most notably, when I was twenty years old. It happened while I was carrying a 4x12 guitar speaker cabinet down a staircase in my apartment. I took a small misstep and fell backwards against the corner of the hand railing. The sharp part hit me right beside my spinal column, resulting in a very minor herniated disk. I had to take some time off from running because the strain on my back was too much. It was about a year before I could exercise again at all. Over that time I gained almost twenty pounds and almost forgot how to run long distances. It was depressing. Looking back, though, there is no reason to believe that a minor herniated disk would require that much recovery time. Ultimately, I am forced to conclude that much of the problem was the fear of being more seriously injured than I was.

So I have some experience with phantom pains of this kind. Nowadays, when I suffer any sort of an injury (which, frankly, is rare), I am vigilant as to my own mind and tricks it wants to play on me. This requires a dedication to self-reflection, to always asking myself to reconsider my position. Not everyone has the constitution for this kind of self-second-guessing, but it is a vital skill to have, in my opinion, and not just for fitness reasons.

All said, I think I'm going to go for a run tonight after I lift weights. I believe that if I can make it to the end of the workout, my leg will be healed.

My Plan

So what's the workout plan now, you ask?

At this stage, I am quite enjoying the opportunity to build some upper body mass. As I mentioned before, I have taken on a sort of A-Day/B-Day approach, where A-Days are bicep/back/abs days, and B-Days are tricep/shoulder days. I am foregoing resistance training on my legs because I am a long-distance runner and I don't want to bulk up my primary means of workout fun. Besides, I still have a half-marathon to run next month. 

Taking a page from the Hyperfitness philosophy, I have decided to change-up my workout routine every two weeks. Burch does this apparently because he gets bored if he does the same workout routine for longer than two weeks. The P90X folks call this "muscle confusion." For myself, I have simply noticed that my body never responds more quickly than when I am starting up a fresh workout routine. If I make an effort to always keep my routine fresh, I expect my body to continue to respond quickly. That's a good thing.

Even so, I want to keep my A-Day / B-Day approach. I also want to continue to focus on building and toning my upper body muscles. So my plan is to keep things theoretically as they are, while varying the specific exercises involved every two weeks. This means that I have one more week of my current routine left before I make another change. I will have to do some real brain-storming to ensure the change is both challenging and effective. Hopefully, it will also be somewhat educational for you, the reader.

More on that as the idea progresses.

Friday Reflections 1/2 : The Economy

And so it begins?

For the past two days, news agencies (CBC, for example) have been reporting on the losses that the markets have been suffering. From my perspective, I don't feel that this is particularly surprising to anyone. For all the stubborn theorizing by folks like Krugman, DeLong, Sumner, et al., the economy has not been recovering. For those who insist that we need "more stimulus," there is absolutely no quantifiable evidence to suggest whatever amount of stimulus was provided has had any impact on markets. The question is why?

The answer is that the economy is not suffering from a demand shock. Previous levels of "aggregate demand" (whatever that concept is worth) were equilibrated to the debt-driven spending spree of the past 10-15 years, depending on how you count it. No Keynesian (or New Keynesian, or neo-Keynesian, or nouveau-Keynesian, or whatever-Keynesian) economist seems to grasp the fact that consuming beyond the global economy's ability to produce results in the cannibalization of capital. 

More diplomatic economists than I would rephrase that italicized statement to "substituting a large amount of future consumption with present consumption." That's how you phrase a production-based concept in terms of demand. That should make my Keynesian readers happy. If one requires a Keynesian explanation for our present-day events, then it is simply this: The reason short-run stimulus results in long-run recession (something Keynes himself acknowledged, by the way) is because when you consume too much today, you have to consume a bit less tomorrow.

At the individual level, you can compare this to a person who lives paycheck-to-paycheck. If that person is smart, he'll spend his paycheck immediately on his bills, and then go grocery shopping. If he's not smart, he'll take his paycheck straight to the bar and get his drink on for a big night. Then he'll have to eat PB&J for 13 days until his next paycheck comes in. That's inter-temporal substitution.

At the macroeconomic level, we have just blown our wad on a massive, ten-year bender. Anyone who tells you that we won't be eating PB&J for a long time is either lying or living in a fantasy. The game is up. The Federal Reserve is barely pretending anymore. Investors are seeking any minor return they can find. But when all is said and done, we have consumed our productive capital and now it's time to rebuild what we just ate.

When people suggest that 20 years of Japanese growth was "erased" by the "lost decade" in that country, they are looking at pure growth rates. They forecast what the growth "should have been" according to the old growth numbers and compare that to what was observed. They fail to understand that the growth was erased during the boom by over-consumption of capital resources.

What we need now is less stimulus and less political action. We need to be left alone so that entrepreneurs can start investing in longer-term methods of production. None of us have any hope of living the good life until our entrepreneurs build the economy's productive capacity up again.

What's It Like Having Diabetes?

When others find out that I am a diabetic, their first reaction is to express condolences. This never ceases to catch me a little off-guard.

From the outside perspective, diabetes is a chronic illness, like cancer or epilepsy. To the non-diabetic, people like me "suffer" from diabetes. They watch us poke ourselves with lancets and needles, they see us react to hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia. They watch us abstain from desserts or too many cocktails. They know we cannot join them for spontaneous fun if we are not prepared for that kind of fun, or if it otherwise conflicts with our regimented needs.

From these observations, they quite rationally conclude that we diabetics feel diabetic all the time. They're wrong.

What Diabetes?

The truth of the matter is that I hardly think about it. I am not even "constantly aware of it." I wake up in the morning and kiss my wife, work out, take a shower, and get dressed. I go to work and chat with my colleagues. I join them for lunch. I go home after work and pursue my interests: running, music, writing, reading, etc. I take my wife out to dinner, and sometimes we even go dancing (the joke in this sentence is that I'm a terrible dancer). I join my friends at local pubs for a drink. I pay my bills on time. I do the dishes and the laundry.

In short, not only is my life identical to everyone else's, but I might even have a more active and interesting life than some people. There's nothing "diabetic" about it. I am basically exactly like you.

No, You're Diabetic!

In fact, I am so much like you, that I have some news for you: Virtually every symptom of diabetes (except maybe DKA) is something that all non-diabetics experience from time to time. Because they are non-diabetics, they have never associated those feelings with their blood glucose levels. However, I can assure you that they are related and that you quite often feel exactly the way I do, even if you have a perfectly functional pancreas.

That restlessness you feel after over-indulging in dessert is hyperglycemia. That bloated, upset-stomach feeling you get after a marathon session at the local sushi joint; that thirst you get after eating a few too many slices of pizza; that tired, bleary-eyed headache you get in the summer sun after having not done much all day... These are the symptoms of hyperglycemia.

The dizziness you feel when you've exercised a lot on an empty stomach, the jittery confusion you feel when you work through lunch and forget to eat all day, the urge to come home after a long, strenuous outing and eat everything in sight; you guessed it: that indicates that your blood sugar is too low.

You feel these things to some degree each and every day of your life. None of these feelings mean that you are a diabetic, of course; that isn't the point. 

The point is that, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, you already have a good idea what diabetes is like because you have already experienced all the symptoms yourself. 

I reiterate: we diabetics are basically exactly like you.

Come On, Ryan, You're Not Exactly Like Everyone Else

True enough, my life is different now that I have diabetes. Most of those differences involve trivial things. For example, I can't stay out all night drinking beer and eating jalapeno poppers like I used to. I can't gorge myself at Thanksgiving dinner anymore, intent on getting my fill of turkey and pie before I have to return to a normal way of life. I can't just decide to skip my daily trip to the gym. I can't say, "Screw it," and stay up all night watching movies.

I can't really eat pasta anymore, and my pizza consumption is relegated to one or two slices every now and then. When I drink, I have to test my blood sugar beforehand, and every couple of hours afterward. I have to be impolite sometimes and leave the party just when it gets interesting, because I have to go to bed. I have to say no to Auntie when she offers me some home cooked jilabi, no matter how much I love that stuff, and no matter how much she insists that Uncle just had some, and he's diabetic, too.

Most noticeably, I cannot put anything into my mouth without first injecting myself with insulin.

It is true that I feel badly when I over-indulge in food, especially sweets. However, while the headache I get might be more severe than what other people experience, my over-indulgence is no less healthy for me than it is for you. People hurt themselves when they do stupid things like eating half a pie for dessert. It matters naught whether they have diabetes or not. What I feel is what you feel. The impact on my body is not unlike the impact on yours. I may have a heightened awareness of the damage such behavior does, and an added incentive to avoid that damage, but make no mistake - you are inflicting the same damage upon yourself, even if you aren't diabetic.

So Life Is a Little Different, But...

What I want people to know about diabetes is this: I'm not "sick." I'm not "suffering." It's not really even "too bad that I have diabetes." I'm fine. I live a life that is exactly as normal as everyone else's (whatever "normal" means, anyway). In fact, I'm in the best shape of my life. If you can believe it, I've never felt better in my whole life. And I am a diabetic. 

If this is a "disease" or a "condition," we diabetics wouldn't know it from how we feel on a daily basis.  

Similarly, asthmatics have to think a little more carefully about things like air quality. No one would ever suggest, however, that an asthmatic is living a lower quality of life than a non-asthmatic. Even though we don't all have fancy medications and devices to carry with us, we all have special needs to ensure smooth sailing through our daily lives. 

Diabetes is a scary word, but we diabetics are not scared. We pretty much think of ourselves as normal. We hope you think so, too.

Not Like That, Like This

From Human Action, The Scholar's Edition, p. 727:

All this passionate praise of the supereminence of government action is but a poor disguise for the individual interventionist's self-deification. The great god State is a great god only because it is expected to do exclusively what the individual advocate of interventionism wants to see achieved. Only that plan is genuine which the individual planner fully approves. All other plans are simply counterfeit. In saying "plan" what the author of a book on the benefits of planning has in mind is, of course, his own plan alone. He does not take into account the possibility that the plan which the government puts into practice may differ from his own plan. The various planners agree only with regard to their rejection of laissez faire, i.e., the individuals' discretion to choose and to act. They entirely disagree with regard to the choice of the unique plan to be adopted. To every exposure of the manifest and incontestable defects of interventionist policies the champions of interventionism react in the same way. These faults, they say, were the results of spurious interventionism; what we are advocating is good interventionism, not bad interventionism. And, of course, good interventionism is the professor's own brand.

Laissez faire means: Let the common man choose and act; do not force him to yield to a dictator.

You may also want to check my Lexicon for Gub.

Bangla Word of the Day

কামড় - "bite"

Works as a verb or a noun.

UPDATE: Whoops, I forgot to transliterate that word! The word in English characters is "kaamor," where the O makes more of an "aw" sound than an "oh" sound.

Recovery Mode

Having made the official choice to pull out of the Montreal Marathon thanks to a torn calf muscle, I am now in full-scale recovery mode. We all need a little recovery time periodically, and generally that means rest. But I'm not very good at resting, and besides, I don't actually need any rest. My calf needs rest, but I myself can still do plenty of exercise.And because I am highly reliant on exercise for diabetes management, my "Recovery Mode" is more active than a total catatonic state. I haven't hit the chips-and-dip-on-a-Lay-Z-Boy just yet.

In the meantime, I thought it might be beneficial to share my recovery workouts with you as I go along. Recall that I am still aiming to complete the half-marathon in Montreal this September. Until then, I need to stay in good shame.

The Recovery Mode Workout

I: Stretching

The first item of business is to prevent any further injury to any related or unrelated muscles. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to stretch regularly. I myself have opted for stretching twice a day. Stretching improves muscle flexibility and helps prevent future injuries from occurring. It is no coincidence that the muscles on my right leg are among the tightest muscles in my body, and that it was my right calf that suffered an injury. 

The exception to this is that you should not spend any time stretching a torn muscle. Therefore, while I am stretching a lot, I am absolutely not stretching my calf at all.

II: Cardio

The next thing we need to consider is getting adequate cardiovascular exercise despite the fact that my primary means of cardio (running) is unavailable to me. I first tested whether I could simply reduce the length and intensity of my daily runs. No dice. Next, I tried getting a good, hard daily workout on a stationary exercise bike. This was much better, but I still found that it affected my calf. I tried the elliptical machine a few times, and felt that it had the same impact on me as running.

What I've settled for at this point is about a 40-50 minute workout on an Arc Trainer or stationary bike, stopping myself short of very heavy exertion. This allows me to get my heartrate up for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, it is not a very good workout for my leg muscles. Yin and Yang, though, right? It would be unreasonable to rest my muscles and exert them at the same time. Recovery means recovery, so I have to take it easy.

III: Weights

Strength training is where I have been making up the difference in my daily workouts. Training for a marathon involves reducing one's body mass and streamlining to become a running machine. Now that I'm out of the marathon and am hungry for a daily workout that meets my need to push hard every day, I find that lifting weights is the best logical place to go.

Understand that I am not at all lifting weights on my legs. I'm talking about upper body weights at this point.

IV: The Routine

What I've settled on is an A-Day/B-Day workout regimen in which I work out my triceps and shoulders on A days, and my biceps, back, and chest on my B-Days. Abs I work out every day.

When I've finished my weights workout, I get a light 40-50-minute cardio workout as described above. So far the Arc Trainer seems to work best, but I take things as they come. Any "second workout" I can get in during the day (a walk, a light hike, etc.), I take. 

Conclusion

So that is pretty much what my "recovery mode" is looking like these days. So far, so good. My upper body is already responding to the added effort, I am kind of stabilizing my blood sugar again, and my leg really seems to be healing up well. 

I will provide additional insight as it becomes available.

What We Can Learn About Life From Curry's Paradox

Curry's Paradox is a fascinating piece of linguistic confusion that has so far been unresolved to the satisfaction of most. Because it is a somewhat complex and abstract paradox, summarizing it succinctly on a casual blog is daunting if not impossible. Thus, I am going to lean heavily on Wikipedia's entry for the following discussion. 

What I hope to show by the end of this is that understanding the nature of Curry's Paradox can teach us a great deal about our own personal ideas.

The Paradox

Citing Wikipedia, we can express the paradox as follows:

If this sentence is true, then Germany borders China.

Think about this for a moment. When I first heard Curry's Paradox, I had trouble seeing what exactly was paradoxical about it. But the fact that it is not immediately obvious highlights the contradiction perfectly. Breaking the issue up into its components, we have the following:

• We know in advance that Germany does not border China.
• As a result of this knowledge, we know that the sentence is not true.
• But wait... the statement doesn't say that Germany borders China, it merely states that Germany borders China if the sentence is true.
• So the sentence is actually entirely true.
• But wait... Germany doesn't border China...

If you're like me, the above statements more or less reflect your thought process upon first encountering Curry's Paradox.

The Main Issue

What's really going on here is not the contradiction in a statement that is simultaneously true and false. Instead, we're looking at a statement that forces us to accept a false conclusion by assumption. What I mean is, when you say that Germany borders China if this statement is true, you are expressing not a hypothesis, but an assumption. 

Compare that to the sentence "If I hurry, I will make it to the opera before they dim the lights." This latter sentence is still expressed using an "If P then Q" structure, but we're not assuming anything, we're merely providing conjecture as to the direct consequence of hurrying. To prove that statement, we'd have to demonstrate something about speed, distance, and time.

Curry's Paradox, by contrast, involves no exogenous information. It is an apparently false statement that can be proven true only by using the statement itself as the underlying assumption. 

It is for this reason that I believe that the crux of Curry's Paradox is the choice between a contradiction and a false assumption. 

That's Logic. What About Life?

Understanding Curry's Paradox gives us insight into debates we may have with others. Often, in the midst of a complicated discussion, people appeal to each other by citing examples and hypothetical illustrations. These are important argumentative tools. However, it's important to keep in mind that your debate counterpart may be tailoring his or her argument to suit.

For example, if I wanted to explain to you why high taxes for rich people hurt the national economy, I might describe a situation in which an over-taxed business owner facing a tax increase opts to decrease production or fire a proportion of her full time employees. There is nothing wrong with this example, other than the fact that its truth is only evident if we assume that it is a likely story in the first place. Of course, assuming it is a likely story is effectively the same as assuming it is true.

Keep in mind that the paradox still holds for statements that are objectively true. I am still engaging in Curry's Paradox if I say, "If this statement is true, then Odysseus is the central character in The Odyssey." The fact that the latter part of the sentence is indisputably true does not mean the sentence itself is any less of a paradox.

Uh, Okay... Therefore...?

Therefore Curry's Paradox teaches us a lesson about our beliefs. We have to be careful about how we construct the reasoning behind our beliefs. We may in fact be starting from the initial belief that our beliefs are correct, and then concluding from that assumption that we were right all along.

More practically useful is the fact that someone you talk to may be engaging in such a ploy. You'll be a better-equipped person if you are able to recognize such situations and demonstrate to your friends why what they're saying is objectionable. 

Pulling Out

The Unpleasant Truth

I guess it's time I bit the bullet...

Anyone who has ever run a marathon knows that sometimes it is not your day. I have seen major contenders pull out of the race entirely just ten kilometers from the finish line. Why do they do this? Are they weak? Are they quitting?

The answer is no. Marathons are not just physically daunting, they are potentially injurious. For some - especially for those interested in winning - when things start to go sour, the choice isn't whether or not to finish; finishing is easy for those of us with experience. (I don't mean to minimize the achievements of first-time marathoners here, but the fact remains: once you've done a marathon or two, the achievement of "just finishing" no longer holds any sway with you.) No, instead these athletes are making what amounts to an economic decision: it is more beneficial to stop, eliminate the risk of injury, and live to run another day. 

So it is with me today. My calf injury, although incredibly minimal, is nevertheless preventing me from training to the fullest extent of my personal satisfaction. My choice is now as follows:

1. Continue my pattern of rest for a week / try running and aggravate the healing process / repeat; or,
2. Acknowledge that if I don't give my leg the time it needs to heal properly, I won't be running until long after the marathon anyway.

Notice that neither of the above choices involve running the Montreal Marathon this year.

Where Did I Go Wrong?

At this point, I suppose it is fair to ask where I went wrong. Is my comprehensive 18-week marathon training program a fool's errand? Did I train too hard? Did I run too long on worn-out shoes? Did I preach about good form, all the while practicing terrible form on my own? If John Stanton runs the Montreal Marathon this year, will he have proven the superiority of his philosophy over mine? Am I just a big know-nothing loser? All talk? 

Well, no. As I described shortly after it happened, my injury came on suddenly. There I was, running a relatively easy fartlek workout, when suddenly I felt a strange pop and my calf immediately began hurting. These are the classic symptoms of a torn muscle. 

The muscle tear occurred a few days after my first 90-minute run of the season, but truth be told, I had missed a few days of exercise over the two weeks prior. What this really means is that I had missed too many workouts to continue my workout schedule "as-is." I was ready enough for a 90-minute long run, but because I hadn't properly built up to it (because I had been missing too many workouts beforehand), I needed more rest than I actually took. The result was a buildup of lactic acid and a weakening of my calf muscle. There was probably also some greater-than-normal muscle tightening as a result of the long run.

Put it all together, and what you get is the makings of a minor muscle tear. The only way to really get over this is to rest. Once I have taken adequate rest, I will no longer have enough time to run a marathon without risking another, similar injury.

Therefore...

My only rational response at this point is to acknowledge that running a marathon this September is an incredibly bad idea for a guy who recently tore his calf. It's not about quitting, it's about letting my body heal in order to run a marathon once I've recovered. I'm not happy about this, but that's life, take it or leave it.

Where do I go from here? Well, physically, I'm going to rest up, put on some upper body mass, and plan to run the half-marathon in Montreal instead. Running 13 miles is very literally a casual jaunt to me. It will be a pleasant way to acquaint myself with the race, the course, etc., have some fun, plan for a run, and keep me going. I will also not have to worry so much about streamlining my body for race perfection, which is a great deal of work. (I'm sure you've noticed how much work it is, especially if you've been following my training regimen.)

Next year, I'll try my race program out again. I'm confident in its ability to produce results, but for me, it just can't happen this year.

In the meantime, I have a series of upcoming projects, most notably Solaris, and my ongoing fun with Ryan Ruins Requests and Insipid Pop Weekend. On top of that, there will be another meet-up in August for the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, and my ongoing economics and philosophy blogging. I will be busy enough!

As for the fitness component of the blog, I will now focus on general fitness and exercise more, and marathon-specific training less. I think this will make for a more well-rounded fitness blog, and I hope you will agree.

Up Next: Learning About Life and Personal Perspectives Through Curry's Paradox

Building a Contrarian Position on Real Estate

There is no question that we are still feeling the effects of the infamous housing bubble. When things first started going downhill, I attended a speaking engagement of economist Steven Poloz'. This must have been early 2007, before things really started to get recessiony. In that speech, Poloz rightly pointed out that it would be "at least five years" before the market was able to recover from the housing bubble, and potentially much longer than that. To my knowledge, Poloz is not in tune with the Austrian School of economic thought, but I found his analysis of the housing situation at the time to be very accurate, and time has only confirmed his analysis since. 

My sincere belief is that real estate prices have not corrected as much as they should, and that they continue to be propped up by the actions of both private and central banks, who have every reason to keep the value of real estate as high as possible in order to protect their loan collateral.

In a way, you could say that the world's financial system is backed by a de facto "real estate standard" rather than a "gold standard." While certainly not universal, it does appear to me that a sizable number of financial instruments and loans throughout the world are based on real estate. The credit crisis in many ways is a crisis of loan collateral being collateralized more than once, double-counted, and simultaneously viewed as an asset and an account receivable. At any rate, the final cause of all this financial abstraction is real estate value. this is why the "s--t hit the fan" when the real estate bubble popped. This is why so many economists and finance experts believe that the issue can be resolved by tighter regulation of financial derivatives and accounting rules. Finally, this is also why the Austrian school of economic thought believes that these economists and financial experts are missing the point.

If today were a Saturday and I had more time to write a blog post, I would now provide a discussion of credit and banking from the Mises perspective. Mises' analysis is fully applicable here, and provides good insight into where all this crazy housing/credit/monetary trouble came from. Unfortunately I just don't have the time to go into it today, especially since the purpose of this blog post is to actually discuss something else...

The question on the minds of ordinary people today is, "To purchase real-estate, or not to purchase real estate?" Is it a good buy? Are people better off renting?

The answer to this question depends on a few things:

1. Will real estate hold any future value whatsoever? Is it a good idea to, in the words of Peter Schiff, "Go into debt to pay too much for a house"? At face-value, I think the answer is a resounding no. But the problem with the face-value analysis is that it assumes homogeneity of real estate. As we all know, every plot of land is different. To cite an obvious example, if you know that an over-priced piece of real estate sits above a huge reservoir of oil, it's still worth it to take that deal.
2. Can you make a return on the money you save by renting? Let's assume you rent an apartment for the next five years. While you do avoid debt and preserve some monthly cash flow, you also do not build any equity whatsoever. In order to build your equity, you need to invest the money you would have spent on a mortgage in something that provides you with equity. Are you capable of finding such an investment? Will mutual funds, GICs, stocks, etc. deliver a better return than you would have made simply by setting aside some money every month as equity. (The portion of your mortgage payment that contributes to loan principal is equity on your balance sheet; I have heard this concept called "forced savings," even though that's not a great term for it. The idea is that by taking on a mortgage, you commit to building equity, whereas if you simply abstain from spending that money, you lose it to inflation.)

Therefore, the issue as I see it is whether the decline in real estate prices will be greater than the equity you build. In other words, if you pay $300K for a house today, will it only be worth $200K when you sell it? Peter Schiff thinks so.

But my position is that it depends entirely on the piece of real estate you're looking at. Certainly, I think Peter Schiff is correct with respect to those mass-produced homes in overnight subdivisions. These houses are on tiny lots in remote corners of cities. If you buy one of these, you'll want to make absolute certain that the neighborhood will still be appealing in 20-30 years. I don't think they will be.

On the other hand, in every city there are older neighborhoods adjacent to valuable commercial areas, where the lots are larger, the green space is a little easier to come by, and the surrounding area is genuinely appealing. If you're considering a real estate purchase and can find one of these lots, I still think it's in your best interest to buy them. The prices are coming down, the sellers will be anxious to sell, and you will end up with more than just a house, you'll end up with a patch of land that has real value. 

Well, that's my thesis, anyway. I will have to spend more time thinking and justifying it. It's worth considering, though.

Once Upon a Fairy Tale Fraud

Here's your Ludwig von Mises word of the day: statolatry.

C.f. the following quote from Human Action, The Scholar's Edition, p. 689

Economics is not called to examine blind faith and bigotry. The faithful are proof against every criticism. In their eyes criticism is scandalous, a blasphemous revolt of wicked men against the imperishable splendor of their idol. Economics deals merely with the socialist plans, not with the psychological factors that impel people to espouse the religion of statolatry.

Brilliant, Luddie, simply brilliant!

But What About Ryan Ruins Requests?

Don't be discouraged by the advent of Insipid Pop Weekend. As always, I continue to accept requests and dedications for my Ryan Ruins Requests feature. You can think of them as two sides of the same coin. Or two coins in the same pocket. Or two pockets in the same pair of pants. Or two outfits in the same wardrobe. Or two closets in the same skeleton... No, wait...

My primary objective in these undertakings is to experiment with some home recording, song writing, performance, and production ideas. I post them to the blog on the off chance that they are interesting to others; and also as a means to share my music with people I know more closely than my blog's readership, without having to constantly barrage friends and family with emails alerting them to the fact that I have more output available for consumption. But it's all in good fun.

I used to keep a music-only blog, but I found it less appealing to write constantly about music and composition, and didn't like the pressure of having to produce a recording, a piece of sheet music, or etc. each and every time I sat down to write something on my blog. Stationary Waves has managed to become a good repository of all my thoughts, be they musical, economic, literary, linguistic, fitness-related, diabetes-related, or random. 

The bottom line is: please keep your requests coming. Don't be afraid to push me in new directions and challenge me. That's what it's all about. This blog will be a lot more fun and interesting if we maintain a communication feedback loop.