The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is written as a dual narrative: one storyline takes place in Hong Kong during World War II, and the other takes place roughly ten years later in 1951. I've never read a novel that takes place in Hong Kong at those times. In fact, I've read few novels (actually none that I can think of) that take place in Hong Kong at all.
This is one of the reasons I was first drawn to the book. That--and also that it looked sort of juicy--a war-time mystery with deception and affairs involved. Yum.

Lee is a writer who is good with evoking setting.  I could feel the oppressive heat of Hong Kong during the summer months, I could picture and feel the bustle of the streets, the beauty of the beaches. Later, when the war starts, she really captures the gruesome chaos of the "outside" and the barren desolation of the English prison camp.

The story begins with Claire, a newly married Englishwoman come to Hong Kong with her husband. She takes a job as a piano teacher in the home of a wealthy Chinese family, the Chens. I assume the novel is called The Piano Teacher because it is in part about the transformation of Claire after she moves to Hong Kong, from a dependent, naive woman, to a freed woman--a woman who has escaped the bounds of her small life and becomes worldly and independent. The story, in my mind, however, was REALLY about Will, the man with whom Claire has an affair.

Will serves as the connection to Lee's other narrative, which takes place ten years earlier. At that time, Will moves to Hong Kong as a young man, and falls for the experienced and wordly, vivacious and uncapturable Trudy, a beautiful half Portugese, half Chinese socialite who constantly parties and has a somewhat suspect past.. Trudy is just an amazing character. She is what really makes the novel worth reading, I think.Claire's story is really secondary to the Will/Trudy story. Certainly the Will/Trudy story is more compelling.

I could go into an anaylsis here--propose the idea that Claire's fall from innocence mirrors that of Will's--and that Trudy embodies the fallen from the get-go.. But I won't. I will say that I found the story of Trudy and Will moving and absorbing. I also learned a lot about Hong Kong during the time that it was colonized by the English, and about what happened to/in Hong Kong during WWII. I was less interested in Claire's story, though it provided an interesting glimpse at Hong Kong 10 years after the horror of WWII.
I gave the book an 8.5. Definitely worth a read.

Racing Weight: A Review

(originally published 11/09).
I had a lovely Thanksgiving with my extremely large family (we're talking over 25 and not everyone was there). It was a pleasant ruckus. I can only tolerate the Thanksgiving ruckus for a few hours at a time, however, and then I need to escape to my chambers and read for a bit before re-emerging in all of my extroverted glory. This Thanksgiving I chose to spend my get-away-reading time with Matt Fitzgerald's text Racing Weight.

In case you were wondering, it's not a good idea to read a book about achieving Race Weight when you are in the midst of digesting a gigantic slice of dark chocolate cake slathered in peanut butter sauce. You already knew this, of course. I'm the only dumb fuck who would read such a book on Thanksgiving Day.

It is a good book. A wise book. A moderate book in which Fitzgerald uses all of the latest research to highlight the advantages of achieving race weight for one's specific sport, and then ways one can safely do this without losing muscle, without becoming a carb-starved bitch, and without becoming homicidal with hunger.  (Okay, he really only covered the part about not losing muscle.)

Much of what he discusses is counter-intuitive. For example, "using a sports drink in training may preserve muscle mass and promote a slightly leaner body composition." Or, you might be interested to know, one can help to optimize her muscle-to-fat ratio by eating protein/carb combo immediately following exercise, because fat burning increases while the carbs you take in are delivered to your muscles to replenish glycogen stores. (143) The book is full of helpful little snatches of race weight know-how such as these facts.

I especially enjoyed the section on supplements. I'm planning on upping my intake of calcium and also trying beta-alanine and conjugated linoleic acid. Has anyone had any experience taking the latter two? Beta-alanine is an amino acid that formulates an antioxidant in your body that supposedly helps fight muscle fatigue and increases lean muscle mass. CLA (the conjugated etc...) has been shown to help fight seasonal weight gain (not as in off-season--as in winter season). Taking adequate amounts of calcium reduces the production of a  hormone that aids in fat storage. (236-241) It think it's safe and maybe smart to give these three supplements a shot. And has anyone out there tried taking creatine? I'm not planning on taking it, but I'm curious what your experience has been with it if you have.

It's a good read, and one I recommend even if you could give a hoot about achieving "ideal" race weight. It's more a book about how to eat to fuel for your life as an athlete than a book on how to get thin. Still, don't read it on Thanksgiving. I hate to admit it, but after reading it I feel monstrously large and I just want to cleanse myself by eating only greens, fruit smoothies with whey protein, and lean meats for the next year.

Before I sign off I want to give a LOUD CONGRATS to Kim (Teta Equals Booby) who competed in IM Cozumel today. SHE. KICKED. ASS. 12:22--which is a gigantic PR. Also competing was Claire (Speedy) who also had a fantastic race and a PR, finishing in 12 hours flat. I'm so excited for both of them, because they both deserved to have awesome races and they did.

The Talent Code by Coyle and Its Implication for Triathlon Training

I'm reading the The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  Its premise really isn't novel.  The gist is that when we focus deeply on something, when we repeatedly work at it, when we throw our passion into it, we can excel in our chosen domain at an accelerated pace.

Of course.

Stil

Publish Post

l, the book has me thinking. It's causing me to acknowledge and question my deeply-rooted beliefs about talent, intelligence and skill.

• On a conscious level I know that any skill can be honed by working at it. 
• On an unconscious level I believe that some people pick up skills more quickly than others, and this is a pre-determined, genetic thing.
• On a conscious level I know that intelligence is worked at; that those people who read, study, and practice are the ones who gain knowledge most quickly and thoroughly, and are the ones who excel at taking standardized tests and landing A's in school.
  
• On an unconscious level I believe that intelligence is inherited. Some people are smart; some people aren't, and there isn't much you can do to change that.
• On a conscious level I believe that I can train my body to excel at whatever I decide is worthy of such a pursuit.
• On an unconscious level I believe there are born athletes and born troopers, and that I am a trooper, devoid of inherited athletic prowess.

This book has made me really question my unconscious beliefs about talent.

For example, I consider my husband very intelligent. I believe he is superior to me in this intelligence, and that I could never match his perfect GREs, his undergraduate degrees in physics and religion (the two of which combined illustrate the range of his interests/ability), his doctorate from Harvard, his thorough knowledge of pretty much everything from A-Z.
In short, he is smart.
He is smarter than me.

Or take Ange. Ange is a killer athlete, and she always has been. When we were tykes she dominated the swimming pool. Dominated. In high school she did cross-country and track, and though they weren't her focus, she dominated there as well. When in college she swam Division I, and domintated there, and when she graduated she ran her first marathon with limited training and she qualified for Boston on this first time out.
She is a natural. gifted.
She is more gifted than me.

BUT.
What if Andy is intelligent and Ange is a killer athlete because from day one they have viewed themselves as intelligent and an athlete respectively, and therefore put in the time--the focused practice--to achieve this?

According to this book what happens is this:

• You have a vision of yourself inspired by something--like watching Tiger Woods on TV, or seeing someone perform Fur Elise on the piano who is your same age, or whatever--and you decide: I want that for me. 
• You go into deep practice. You don't just practice; you get into this meditative state where you slow things down and divide the skill into its various parts, memorize each part through constant repetition, and then emerge, skill born. Your learning is accelerated exponentially when you achieve this focused state.
• You develop passion. You want this thing for yourself and you continually go into deep practice to achieve it. You have a vision of yourself that is long term. You are a STUDENT. You are a SWIMMER. You are a PIANIST.  This vision sustains you and you aren't deterred from your mission.
• As you enter this state, the focused learning state, the myelin in your brain wraps tightly around the ignited nerve fibers, insulating them and allowing electric impulses to travel more speedily and smoothly. The more the skill is practiced, the more myelin wraps around the nerve fiber, and the more rote the skill becomes. So it's all about myelin. Apparently when they dissected Einstein's brain there was a shitload of myelin in there. At the time they didn't know why. Now they do. He myelinated--like incessantly.

So, perhaps, Andy believed he was an intelligent from an early age, and he learned how to go into "deep practice" to realize this truth. What I have noticed over the years is that when Andy doesn't know something, he will slow things down and focus--sometimes for days--until he gets it. Do this for forty years straight, and well, no wonder he is Wonder Boy. He has myelinated the shit out of his brain. It's not that he is more innately talented than others; it's that he has entered this state repeatedly since he was a wee one.

I didn't do that.

Or with Ange. She got the signal she was an athlete early on. She worked at it. and worked at it. and worked at it. She myleinated when doing the fly, when running on the track. Ange is really strong, and when you look at her you think, Wow, she inherited a seriously athletic build. But then  you look at her parents. They are small. PETITE. Ange's mom is smaller than me, and that's saying something. Her genes didn't make her strong--I don't think, anyway. It was the signal she gave to her body from a young age. Develop here. Move here. Myelinate now. Her body and mind adapted to her vision of herself, to her constant deep practice.

It's interesting to watch my kids in this light. Jordan loves to draw. And she's good. I always thought this was a gift. She inherited the "art" gene, I'd say. Now I see that she is good because she spends so much time in deep practice. She can spend hours drawing a flower. She draws it again and again until she gets it right. She's making myelin, and it's wrapping around nerve fibers so that each time she draws that flower, she does it with greater ease, accuracy and skill. Conversely, Jordan is not creating much myelin around playing soccer. On the soccer field she is somewhere else. She chats with her friends; she looks at her feet. She follows the ball but doesn't get into the action. This isn't because she isn't an athlete. If it were up to genes, she certainly would be a soccer player. Her father and uncle are awesome at the game. But she hasn't gone into deep practice around soccer. She likes soccer. But she doesn't love it. Until she develops passion for it, until she goes outside each morning to work on it, until she gets some myelin wrapping going on in soccer land, she won't achieve it.

What does this all mean?
The cool thing about myelin is that it can grow throughout your lifetime. It grows with greater speed and efficiency when you are younger, but it grows as an adult nevertheless.

What this says to me is that I need to stop believing there is a ceiling for my achievement. The thing is, I have to WANT that achievement, so much so that I meditatively hone its various parts, so much so that I practice deeply at it for years. I could learn physics. Do I want to? Well, yes. But not so much that I am willing to focus on it the way I have, say, focused on triathlon. 

We can't change our genes.
But that doesn't matter. We have more power over our abilities than we have been led to believe.

Looking To Write A Few More Chapters

Recently I read Dara Torres' biography, Age is Just A Number. My friend Liz wrote the book and maybe it's for that reason I liked it so much. I like Liz, of course, but she is also a fantastic writer. For those of you who have read the book, I know it reads in the first person. That makes Liz's feat in writing it even more impressive, doesn't it?

Anyway. You should all read it because, like me, many of you are parents, no longer spring chickens, and mature enough to truly appreciate being an athlete.  Many of you are also old enough to remember when Torres went to her first Olympics at age 15, and then her second, and her third, and her fourth, and most recently, her fifth, at age 41.  The names I associate with Torres--Tracey Caulkins, Rowdy Gaines, Steve Lundquist (I had magazine cut-outs of him all over my high school bedroom walls), Matt Biondi, Janet Evans--all retired years and years and years ago. (You must admit Lundquist was rather smoking. I felt the need to travel down memory lane here...)

And yet here is Torres. She is not only still a force, still  unbelievably strong, still winning. She has actually improved at every Olympics in which she's competed.  In 2008 she won her first individual silver medal  in the 50 meter freestyle--and she was just shy of taking the gold by 1/100th of a second.
And she was 41.
And she is a mom.
And no, Ted, I really DON'T believe she doped.

In the past I've felt that speed and endurance are wasted on the young.  They take speed for granted, use it nonchalantly, view it as a given.  The younger athlete is pissed when his speed or endurance fail him and he doesn't win, or place, or beat the old dude out there. The older athlete, on the other hand, expects his speed and endurance will fail him. He doesn't expect to win anymore--or even place, except, perhaps, in his age group. He doesn't expect to beat the young dude with the attitude and the lean body.

But I'm not sure exactly WHY this is true.  It certainly hasn't been true in my case. I was a fairly good swimmer in my high school years, but I am a better swimmer now--at least in terms of endurance swimming. Further, in high school and college I couldn't run at all, and I considered it an amazing success that in my mid-20s I completed my first marathon in around 4:10. Just recently I took 51 minutes off that marathon time--and I'm not nearly as proud of that accomplishment as I am of that first 4:10, which seemed positively miraculous at the time. At any rate, I wouldn't want my current self to compete against my young self. Mentally and physically my seasoned older self would kick the shit out of my self as a girl.

And it's not just me who has improved with age. Do you know the average age of the top two women runners at this year's NYC marathon? 39.5. In fact, every one of the women in the top five at NY this year was over 32; the average age for the five being 36. And did you note that the gold in the last Olympic marathon went to Constantina Tomescu-Dita, who happens to be a 38-year-old mom?  And this year at Kona, every one of the women in the top ten was over 30, with the singular exception of Mirinda Carfrae, who is 28. DeDe Greisbauer has been in the top 10 at Kona for the last several years running, and this year she celebrated her 39th b-day. Even among we non-professionals I can cite examples of the older athlete kicking the younger athlete's ass. My friend Alina, a state champion in her high school years in multiple events, is now bettering the times she posted back then, and she's nearly 40. My friend Melissa, too, keeps getting better with age. She has PRed over and over again this season, and she's been competing as a runner all 44 years of her life.

Dara Torres, via Liz, put it this way:

Lifestyle, not genetics, is the primary reason older athletes tend to slow down. Most people as they reach their thirties, place more priority on their jobs and families, as well they should. But as a result they downgrade their workout goals from achieving personal bests to staying in shape. This might be the right decision for many. This might even by the right decision for you. But if you still have athletic ambitions, if you still want to compete and win, there's no reason you have to give up. Your body can still perform if you put in the effort--if you still do that 10 mile run or that long, hard quality set. You just need to be smarter about training and more time-efficient. But chances are, if you're an older athlete, you're smarter and more time-efficient anyway.

If you guessed that this whole post is just a pep talk to myself about the fact that I'm entering a new AG next year, you are right.

But it's a good pep talk. Because the more I look, the more I find examples of how peak performance often doesn't occur until our later years. The most competitive age group in triathlon is NOT 20-29, as one might guess. Often people ask if I'm excited to move into the 40-44 age group, since presumably the competition will not be so fierce. But, in fact, the 40-44ers are MORE competitive than the 35-39ers. I will actually have to improve my performance next season if I want to continue placing well in my age group.

Sometimes I find myself wistfully looking back. So many of the big chapters of my life seem finished. When you are growing up (as a girl, anyway) you often wonder about the mysteries life holds for your future: who will I marry? What will I be? How many kids will I have?  Where will I settle down to live? You don't think of questions beyond those chapters. It's as if those chapters are the only chapters. Certainly when young you don't ponder when you will start your second, or third career, marriage, family, or home. You don't think about whether you will enjoy a comfortable retirement. You simply don't imagine the later chapters in life. It's hard to even fathom what they are. I think this is why 40 seems so ominous, so mortifying, so well, OLD. We haven't imagined the chapters after 40--and so it seems that the book must end when we get there.

But now I'm trying--trying very hard to embrace that over 40 holds incredible possibility, because I have no idea what chapters have still to be written. Life certainly isn't over. It's called MID-life because one is half way there.

And isn't it usually the second half of the race that holds all of the meaning and excitement--pain and joy? Isn't that where the shit really happens? Isn't that where the ones who have not given up show their stuff and pass all of the young bucks?