I was reading a great collection of diary entries and columns by the great Bob “Bobke” Roll, who had a career racing both road bikes and mountain bikes in the 80’s to the early 90’s.\u00c2\u00a0 He was also a training partner for a young upstart Lance Armstrong as he made his comeback from cancer.<\/p>\n
As I read these various stories of pain, misery, disappointment, triumph, strangeness and fun, it struck a chord with me in my struggles with my meager rides, and also with my years of struggling with the viola, and other aspects of being a student of the arts.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of cycling problems that I’m working on now.\u00c2\u00a0 First is my overall pace.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m at around 13.5 mph average over around a 20-25 mile course.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d love to get that up to around 16 mph avg.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a big leap.\u00c2\u00a0 I realized this two days ago when I went out with a new neighbor who is an experienced cyclist about 10-15 years my senior.\u00c2\u00a0 He kicked my sorry butt as we went around a loop from the Steel Bridge to the Sellwood Bridge twice – 22 miles give or take.\u00c2\u00a0 He simply was able to keep a higher cadence on the big chainring that I was able to.\u00c2\u00a0 My legs just weren’t up for it.\u00c2\u00a0 After a rest day yesterday, I went out on my Cornelius Pass Road loop, and discovered that I was able to stay in a higher gear for longer, and at my desired cadence of around 80-85 rpm.\u00c2\u00a0 Progress was made by riding with someone with greater ability than my own.\u00c2\u00a0 Hmmm…<\/p>\n
This has a direct correlation to the musical world.\u00c2\u00a0 When you get a chance to work with someone who is much better than you, either as a musician, or a technician, or both, it challenges you to reach within and try to match what they’re doing.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes it seems like you’ve failed miserably, but then you go back to the home laboratory and find that through some miraculous process of osmosis that you’ve made a break from your previous plateau.<\/p>\n
My next cycling problem is hill climbing.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a similar problem in that I cannot sustain a good pace up any incline steeper than about 5% (a 5 percent grade means that there is 5 feet of rise for every 100 feet of distance).\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously, I need to do some routes that present me with lots of hills, and I just need to find a way to get up them – tackle the hard hills and find a way to complete them.<\/p>\n
As an instrumentalist, it’s a familiar problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Approaching an unfamiliar piece is similar to tackling unknown terrain.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to dissect the various aspects of the piece, musical and technical, and see how they relate.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you’ve got to see how these aspects affect each other: it’s an oft-made mistake to just work out the technical aspects and leave the musical problems ’till the notes lay well.\u00c2\u00a0 A very wise former teacher once told me that this approach was ass backwards – he said, ‘you’ve got to approach the technical passages from a musical standpoint, or else all you’ve done is learn a bunch of notes, and that’s an etude, not a piece of music’.<\/p>\n
Some pieces are like a long, relatively flat ride.\u00c2\u00a0 Pacing is essential to both survival and making the piece work architecturally.\u00c2\u00a0 Other works are serious mountain stages, where you’ve both got to have the brute strength to tackle them, but also be clever and know when to conserve you’re energy.\u00c2\u00a0 As with climbing any hill, you’ve got to get used to the fact that on one day you will fail miserably, but that in failing, you will learn some vital information that will eventually help you to conquer the piece (or hill).<\/p>\n
Some examples: a Bruckner symphony (or the Schubert “Great” C-major symphony) would be like the long, flat ride.\u00c2\u00a0 Strauss’ Don Juan would be the Alpe d’Huez.\u00c2\u00a0 And most Mahler symphonies would be a long Tour de France stage, with huge climbs, technical descents, and wild sprints to the finish line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was reading a great collection of diary entries and columns by the great Bob “Bobke” Roll, who had a career racing both road bikes and mountain bikes in the 80’s to the early 90’s.\u00c2\u00a0 He was also a training partner for a young upstart Lance Armstrong as he made his comeback from cancer. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[50,115,22],"tags":[3669],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-music","category-viola","tag-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-h6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1045,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/07\/27\/high-mileage-vehicle\/","url_meta":{"origin":1060,"position":0},"title":"high mileage vehicle","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Today was a red letter day for me in my nascent cycling career - I hit the 122 mile mark for the week starting last Monday (the 21st).\u00a0 It's great - my average speed is slowly climbing (to around 13 mph) and now a 30 mile day feels like a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cycling"","block_context":{"text":"cycling","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/cycling\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1297,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/17\/close-call\/","url_meta":{"origin":1060,"position":1},"title":"close call","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, my cycling adventures continue.\u00c2\u00a0 I was out on a ride this morning ( a beautiful fall day for riding!) with my neighbor Jon and we were coming back up Upper Boones Ferry Road on our way to Hall Blvd.\u00c2\u00a0 I was riding in front, and I noticed a brown\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cycling"","block_context":{"text":"cycling","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/cycling\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":434,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/09\/15\/got-in-a-good-ride-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":1060,"position":2},"title":"got in a good ride today","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"34.83 miles, 1250 ft of cumulative elevation gain, 12.9 mph avg speed Time for a beer or two... Click here for a map of the route. Click the image for the gory details!","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"img_9127.JPG","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/img_9127.thumbnail.JPG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":23769,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2024\/08\/26\/summer-music\/","url_meta":{"origin":1060,"position":3},"title":"summer music","author":"Charles Noble","date":"August 26, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The Oregon Symphony's season ended on June 12 this year, and there was barely time for a respite and the summer festival season began in earnest. 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Last year, we thrilled to Floyd Landis' thrashing of the rest of the peleton after a disastrous day in the Alps, only to find out that he was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"affiche_2007.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/affiche_2007.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5281,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/06\/busy-week-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1060,"position":5},"title":"busy week","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The season is beginning in its usual fits and starts manner, but there are some other things going on that are making this week a bit busier for me.\u00a0 First of all, my first century ride (see sidebar to the right for donation info) is coming up on September 26th,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chamber music"","block_context":{"text":"chamber music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/chamber-music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/IMG_5844-250x187.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}