Posted: February 1, 2005

Science of Sport: Piano Lessons for Runners

The Running Research News Weekly Training Update

Hi Everyone,

Lately, I have been feeling uncomfortable during my piano lessons.

Things started to go south two weeks ago when I attempted to sight-read Edward-Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. No, I wasn't preparing to audition for the role of city-wide organist for this-spring's spate of high-school and university graduations. The piece just happened to be one of the "classics" in my Favorite Melodies The World Over instruction book.

There was nothing too mysterious about the blue feeling, I thought. My 17-year-old daughter Sasha will be graduating in May herself, and I reckoned that Pomp was opening the door of my unconscious mind just a crack, letting a few feelings about this bittersweet occasion seep out.

But the same thing happened this past Wednesday as I took a stab at Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor, one of my favorites. I tried to place the blame on the slightly sad sounds of the non-major key, but it didn't work. Something else was going on.

As my instructor droned on about proper fingering (he doesn't subscribe to this Update, so it is OK to use the verb "droned" to describe his teaching), I had some intense memories of childhood, recalling my first piano lessons as a second-grader. Wednesdays after school, I would veer from my usual path home and take a solitary position at the South-Cornelia-Street bus stop. The ride to the teacher's house was all good - the dime slipping mysteriously down the little chutes inside the change box, the driver's total indifference to my presence, the sudden lurch of the bus just before I reached my seat, the long plastic stop cord which had to be pulled at just the right time - these things suddenly made my life very exciting. The rest of the week I was a kid kicking a football around in his back yard, but on Wednesdays I was a little man on a worldly adventure.

In the winter, when the bus slipped past a certain point on Morningside Avenue, young junior-high "hoods" would rock the windows with icy snowballs, hitting the glass hard enough to make the blue-haired ladies who had just boarded near the Peters-Park salon mutter with disapproval. In the fall, the bus glided down the Avenue, encased by the flaming orange leaves of the overhanging trees, smoke and tar smells edging into the bus, the driver's radio crackling with the hoarse crowd noises from a World-Series game. One October day in 1956, I stepped off the bus just as Don Larsen made his perfect pitch, a called strike, Yogi rushing out to crush the tall pitcher with a bear hug. I couldn't imagine that my life could get any better.

My teacher was a concert pianist, and she brooked no nonsense about music theory. Performance was everything, and I waded into the compositions allegretto. The notes in my Schaum book were a foreign language at first, sometimes speaking by themselves, sometimes grouped together in threes, sometimes sharp, sometimes flatted, but I soon learned their correspondences with the black and white keys and began memorizing pieces, one by one. I learned to play fortissimo or pianissimo - and always ritardando at the end. I was amazed at how the different compositions, the hammers hitting on the strings in different ways, could tell unique stories and evoke such strong feelings, and my self-confidence grew by leaps and bounds as the initial humble playing of each piece gradually evolved into a recital-type performance. True, my schoolmates were certain that I was a "square" for taking lessons, but I was a highly skilled square who was having fun.

I changed instruments in junior high, thinking it was much cooler to get off a bus with a pair of drumsticks in my hands, instead of the collected works of Beethoven. My brother passed on a rumor that one of the high-school drummers I most admired (someone who in fact bore a striking resemblance to one of the "hoods" who had drummed my winter bus with snowballs ) practiced for one hour each day (!), so I decided that two hours of daily drum rehearsal would be perfect (I was into high-volume training in those days). After school, it was drums, math, and English, in that order, followed by mashed potatoes, beef, and bed. In my junior year of high school, after our spring concert, my band director told me that I should apply to a music school in New York.

But I kept up a family tradition by applying to a different college instead, one with a modest music program. I decided not to play in the college orchestra so that I would have more time for my studies, also a family tradition. And so, gradually, my musical life began to slip away. My recent sadness during piano lessons was related to that loss, the gradual falling away of something I loved, the diminishment of my ability to play a beautiful instrument very well. It was also related to memories of a time when I rode the bus to a concert-pianist's house, thinking that the whole world was in my grasp, that I could do absolutely anything I wanted to do, that I would succeed in everything I attempted.

As my current (2005) teacher was bombilating "Use your first, second, and fifth fingers for this chord," I wondered what would have happened if I had continued with my musical efforts, so long ago. I noted that it was good to have those kinds of memories, to re-visit wonderful times from one's past, and I could feel a sense of peace and happiness replacing the melancholy mood. I also realized that many runners probably have feelings about their training and racing which are similar to my sentiments about my life-long musical pursuits. For example, some runners think back to their younger days, when they were running very well, and there are many "if-onlys" in their thoughts: If only I hadn't hurt my knee, I could have set the school record in the mile. If only I hadn't overtrained, I could have won the state championship. If only I had trained the way I do now, I could have broken XX minutes for the 10K. If only I had been more serious about my training back then, when I was young, I could have .............

Many runners who have passed the 40-year mark have an age-related sensibility about their running. They realize in a very definite way that the PRs set at a younger age are no longer attainable, that running is now a different kind of game, a kind of jousting with oneself in which - all too often - loss prevention seems to be the overriding goal, rather than improvement.

When these kinds of thoughts are present (about lost opportunities, about the inability to re-gain one's past level of performance), the motivation to train intensely and to race aggressively sometimes falls, and one's sense of joy about being able to train and run may disappear.

They shouldn't. Although it may well be impossible to re-visit the PRs of youth, very few runners have optimized their performances for the specific ages at which they find themselves. In other words, very few runners are training perfectly, and it is almost always possible to improve your performances over the course of a year, whether you are 40, 60, 75, 95, or some age in between.

These improvements are wonderful things, good things in their own right, achievements which do not need to be compared with anything else in your life, including your youthful PRs. I will never again play the piano as well as I did in grade school or the drums as well as I did in high school, but it matters not. I can still enjoy music, get excited about the fact that I am getting better on the piano again. When you shave 50 seconds off last-September's 10-K time or seven minutes off a recent marathon clocking, I would like you to be excited about that, too, even if those times are far afield from your past capabilities.

It is great to improve, to do all of the little things that are necessary to get better. All of us can take the time to measure our vVO2max on the track and then get serious about some vVO2max training, and we can improve the strength training that we carry out, too. We can jolt ourselves out of our Tuesday-track-Thursday-tempo-run-Sunday-long-run ruts and get down to the business of really training better.

And we can really enjoy what we are doing, regardless of our level of running. My dad once said to me that just being able to move around was one of the great freedoms of life, a sentiment to which I attached little significance when all was well. When dad was eventually confined to a wheel chair, when the mere act of coming to the family table for dinner became a struggle, when his body became more like a prison than a liberating force, I understood. All of the training sessions that you carry out, even the ones which "go poorly", are victories, triumphs of fitness over senescence, expressions of your incredible independence and your glorious, never-give-in spirit.

There's just one last thing I would like to mention: If you ran really well when you were younger and/or if you have had great experiences as a runner, re-visit those times every now and then, and enjoy the memories with all of your heart. Those jeweled occasions are still an important part of your life; they are precious moments, never causes for regret.

With very kindest regards,

Owen Anderson