Smart Athlete Podcast Ep. 40 - Evan Pardi - EMBRACING COMMUNITY - Part – Solpri

Go to Part 1 Go to Part 2 EVAN: Yeah, I've practiced them because they're audition licks. So, like, I know all the licks. I mean, if shit is really awkward, that's a different story. But I know for instance, tomorrow we have a concert we're doing Beethoven Six Symphony. It's like, man, I've played that like four times. Yeah, I can sing the violin part while I play my bass part, right, like what's happening. Realistically, I think it's true for most competent classical musicians, you could just walk in and perform it. And a lot of times I've done gigs, where I get hired, and then I play an hour and a half to two-hour rehearsal and then just play the whole thing that night and it's good. It's proper, it's right. Right? So, like, the Messiah when Christmas times comes, yeah, it's like people are like, wow, you guys must be rehearsing so much. And you just tell the poor audience member like “Yeah, tons of rehearsals, man.” It's like dude showed up this afternoon and I've played this probably 130 times in the last like, four years. So, no-- JESSE: Yeah, it’s just like listening to conjecture and what kind of nuances do you want to see you want from it, and then putting or like, ?? 01:14>. SPEAKER 2: Half the time like we don't even listen to them, right. Cuz if it’s just a local like let's be honest, unless it's like a large symphony like the Phoenix Symphony, which, when you work with Phoenix Symphony, you do everything your principal tells you and you just follow everybody, but that's part of being a great musician is you just follow whatever the crew is, right? Like, whatever that-- even that local like church, yeah, you just follow everybody else. Like if everybody else is playing super vibrato, garbage, whatever. All right, I guess that's what we're doing. Right. So, in that case, you just ?? 01:48> back. So, it's just again, it's simple logic, really. But to answer your question I think a lot of my practicing days has been from a very highly technical standpoint. My professor here is arguably, I think you can put, even if you hate him you put him in the top three best bass double bass players in the world he's, you know, plays violin concertos on the bass. He’s like the only guy in the world that makes a living being a solo bass player which is crazy. He just really likes it nice and warm. He’s from Romania. So, once the iron curtain fell, he came over here, you know. So, it's no desire to go back to cold Eastern Europe. ?? 02:33> here. What can I say? I like you here too. So, yeah, like highly technical focus and trained. It's just very similar to triathlon training. It's like I see so many people rack up junkyards in the pool because they think it helps, junkyards on the bike, junkyard, junk miles on the bike, blah, blah, blah. Like great I know tons of people who practice six hours a day and I get more gigs than them. And it’s like, well, why? Well, there's a lot of aspects to this just like triathlon is a lot of aspects. So, good fundamental foundations in just being aware like thinking about what you're doing will get you a lot further than just ?? 03:13> literally sitting in a room. Now, it does help that I play bass. Same with like bassoon players in the wind section, right? If you're a flute girl, you're a dime a dozen. Right? Every institution in the country has 200 flute applicants every year for their doctoral program. Whereas if you play walrus or a double bass, yeah. You're statistically in a lot much better situation than somebody else. JESSE: Yeah, or if you play like the harp, you're like five people to play the harp. EVAN: Yeah. I always say if I had to do it all over again, I'd pick a different instrument I would do organ or harp. Organ is very cool. Nobody plays organ. Right? It's just like piano players like yeah, dime a dozen. But actually playing organ, whoa now you got some weird special interests that supersedes everything. And organ players find work like crazy. I also think it's just a cool instrument. There's only two organ builders in the entire United States and like ?? 04:13>. So, yeah, I mean to be honest like it's just kind of a mess a lot of the time in terms of what I'm doing. But I've been playing so long now at a certain point like most of the music that I have to deal with I can, it's pretty much under the-- very much under control. JESSE: Right. It’s within your proficiency. It's not like no, we're going to step like ?? 04:40> don’t know why I just forget his name. Wagner like the first time I played a Wagner piece I was out of my mind with just all the accidentals just coming at you super fast. I was like what is happening right now? And I'm sure I didn't even nail half of it when we got to perform. But if I had practice, practice, practice, and I get to that point it's like, I played Wagner I can play proficiently, like I'm not gonna worry about, you know, something in a much, like we do it for our Christmas concert where it's almost like pops. Where it's like, everything's quarter notes, half notes. You're just like, I don't need to practice this, we’ll just show up, it'll be fine. EVAN: Yeah, I mean, at a certain point, and I relate music as you probably-- I consider music not even a, at least for like music players, like we're not really-- we don't-- We're not artists. We're tradesmen. Ultimately, music old isn't in a college academics and I mean it is in the academic side. But like what people think of as musicians, it's like, man, we're just tradesmen. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm just providing a product that is similar skilled labor to that of any plumber, electrician. Now, this pisses off my colleagues quite a lot. But I have a much more pragmatic analysis of what we do which is simply play the notes on the page like machines if we do a good job we’re a good machine who deserves nice rewards. If we do a bad job we’re a poor machine who deserves crap. So, in that sense, I think it helps, especially for many people who like in the triathlon world, who aren't musicians, right, like ?? 06:23>, it's just like music is a trade, sort of make sense at that point. Right? So, yeah, I think that's the large part of it. But yeah, I've had a long, it was harder in my undergrad. I practiced a lot more, and had a lot further gap to make up. And now it's sort of in a different realm. You've like polishing off things, as opposed to like, just getting in the massive amounts of volume. But in that sense, it does differ than tri but yeah, I guess the answer to your question is, I don't know. But I sort of try to take it day by day in terms of priorities. Like this weekend's crazy. I have a six and a half hour, six hour recording session on Sunday. So, it's like I've done my two long rides already this week, this morning and yesterday, so that's kind of the nice thing but yeah, there's always some weirdness, right? Musicians’ schedules are already weird. So, mine's extra weird. This leads to my like, I train mostly by myself. I think more athletes should be willing to seize that especially for swimming. I sense this vein ?? 07:40> my athletes I coach and other people I know like, they don't want to swim by themselves, there's nothing to be afraid of. JESSE: ?? 07:47> EVAN: Well, good, good. I mean like but some-- A lot of people-- JESSE: No, no, I get it. I get it. I'm just saying like, it's just funny because I'm more like, I can-- I've had some of the guys that I race with locally, basically the top five of us here in town, Kansas City, we all know each other. We've been racing together for 8-10 years now. And several of them would be like, “Hey like, we should get together and train.” And I'm like, “Man, I'm self-employed like I've done training by the time you get off work. I don't want to wait till seven in the evening.” Like, I ?? 08:20>. So, I'm just like, I want to do my own thing. EVAN: Wake up at 4:30 in the morning if I don't have to. There is this cult, there's this-- and as we all sort of know it, but nobody really wants to say it. We always like triathlon has to have this like weird cult fetish of like extra pain on top of the pain. It's like, oh, not only do I as a pro have to like train an ungodly some of ours and put my body through the physical, like limits of its abilities. But I'm going to do it at four in the morning. Because that's what we do. ?? 08:50>, gonna do it at four in the morning. It's like, okay, you got it chief. Whatever you want. So, there's that weird vein that I just, I don't ascribe to. And I think ?? 09:04> maybe it has to do with my upbringing, maybe it has to do with my own like personal history. But I don't know, at the same time, I think it's just calm down. You got to enjoy your life a little bit. You can't just be puritanical smashing your face into, you know training wall all the time. So, yeah, I think that one’s always funny to me. It's like pros who wake up, like yeah, man I know you don't do anything. Why do you gotta wake up at four? ?? 09:30> the rest of the day. JESSE: I'm not turning the alarm clock on, I'm just-- I'll get up when I get up and start the day if that's all I'm doing. EVAN: Right. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. So, I mean the same thing with like group rides and things like I don't really group ride. I mean I could justify it on a training front because like oh well, I don't race draft legal, so when I'm racing I'm by myself. But you know, I think a lot of it's just also like I don't want to go and like have a schedule with some other people. And on top of that, like a lot of times I have a very late Friday or Saturday night if I have a gig. And by the time I get home from-- Like it's funny because you know if I work something like the Phoenix Symphony or Arizona Broadway theater, and then my, like the overall hours I'll be gone from the house might be six to eight hours, but it's all at night or in the evening, right? Like so if I leave it for and get back at 10, that's six hours, right? So, by the time I get home, and it's like, well, I'm going to tinker around a little bit before I go to bed, the next thing it's like, oh, it's 11:30 or something, or 11. It's like, well, I'm not waking up at six for that group ride because I have half a brain and realize that if you just get tired and do stuff, you don't get consistent training. So, and I think to bring it all back to that point, because I know my coach, Tim Crowley has been like a constant. I've had the same coach for eight years now, pretty much and I trust him with everything, and just a great guy in every sense of the word. And his credential list is endless. I mean, he's been around for forever. Coached, the Olympic team in 08, for instance, but it's just all about consistency, which sometimes I think is so overlooked in our desire to like, find a new aero device or find a new training toy, or get in these massive workouts. Like oh, my athletes this week train 20-30 hours, and they've had four weeks at 30 hours. And then it's like, oh, wow, by the time race season came around, they're all broken hunks. Right? It's like, well, what did that accomplish? Very little. But the goal is ultimately consistency. So, I think if any-- it's such a trite word thrown around so often. But I mean, like a macro sense, consistency. And like my own playing as a musician has been like the stupid consistent for many years. It's like, I don't practice a ton, I don't practice like nothing and blah, blah, blah, and I study progress somewhere. Same with like training. It's like yes, I don't, I don't get anywhere near the hours like the big, some of the big guys do. But goddammit, ?? 12:05> standardize some of this little incline, right? My angle of incline is like to one degree or two degrees, right? Whereas people want it to be like 45. And it's like, well, maybe the 45 one works sometimes, but I'd rather put all of my money on the nice steady approach. You know? It's just, it's like betting on horses. I’m betting on them to place, right? I'm gonna bet on the horse with the best odds to place, right? Hey, great. So, I can go every time all races, I’m a winner. Right? I’m not gonna win more than 10 sets of that bet but I'm a winner. So, in that sense quite practically is it's a stupid analogy, but like in your own like life regression as a musician as an athlete, it's like that's been my kind of mo. And it weirds people out sometimes it confuses people, but it's worked for me. JESSE: I feel like if you're doing the thing that nobody else is doing, you're probably doing the right thing that's been my mo is like, if everybody's going right, I'm going left. And that's worked out pretty well for me. So, it's kind of a similar vein where everybody wants that, like instant success. You're like, no, that's cool. Like, I'll just take, like I’ll pick up my one rock today, and I'll pick up another rock tomorrow and I'll have my-- I’ll have enough stones to build a house eventually. EVAN: Yeah, it's on a more practical front, I think we see that in the current like, tri industry in terms of the products and goods being pumped out there. They're all hitting that vein of like, right now you can get 3% on your VO2 if you do this. You're like, “Oh, God, here we go again.” It's everything that's old is new again. And so it's that I've been around-- it's funny, I'm not that old but I've been doing triathlon now for almost like pretty much, almost 10 years. So, it's funny because you start seeing the same things. It's like, “Oh, this is really hot in 2011 and then just blew up and like, oh, no, it's coming back.” Right? And with Tim, who's been in it for like 35 or 30 just years now, right like, Tim race Dave Scott, Mark Allen, right. So, it's just great to see that, and you just talk about the things that, it's like, this makes no sense. Like, we've seen this before, like the trend’s just come back. And it's just, it's very funny. It's very funny. I'm like on a more materialistic note, like everything is under the sun. It's like, come on guys, we were doing this, people thought about this 30 years ago. We all agreed it was a stupid idea. So, we put it away. Oh, look, it's back. I could sit here and start naming things, but that's probably not good for either of our potential sponsorship opportunities at any given moment. JESSE: Yeah, no worries. we're a little over time, but I'm gonna ask anyway. We’ve kind of been dancing around this our whole conversation. So, there's a question, last season I asked everybody about recovery food. This year, I'm calling them seasons, but years. This year, I'm asking everybody, what do you think the purpose of sport is? EVAN: What do you think the purpose of sport is? Wow, I'll give you a historical answer that I somewhat agree to, the hope that we don't go kill each other. I mean, what was the point of medieval tournament's right, to essentially give people an outlet for not going off and killing each other. And we're ultimately, horrible, violent human beings. So, I don't know. I think that's a practical answer. I mean, in terms of our modern world, of course, we'd like to think we're so much more nuanced beyond that. But I think, I don't think we're better than the Romans or the Starla mains Empire. Are we? I don't think so. So, perhaps that's not the answer you're looking for. It's a little bit more vicious. JESSE: I’m not looking for an answer. I'm just looking to have an answer. EVAN: I'm sure it's different than the rest of your respondents. No, I do genuinely believe that ultimately, the point of sport is for all of us is just to quell some sort of animalistic behavior that we have. I mean, I'll be honest, I do a lot of workouts and I do two a days because it makes me feel good, right? I mean, I think we're all sort of addicted to exercise and like, that's a whole nother can of worms. But there's something raw about it, right? Sports kind of keep us all in check, keep those like natural instincts sort of quelled. I don't-- it's kind of what we've agreed as the more civilized approach to the alternative, which is much more rough ?? 16:40>. I mean, ?? 16:43> kind of the German architect of the World War One battle plans. I'm a big fan of history if you haven't gathered. That was a whole school of thought there that like without war like man's just bad, like he just can't do good things, like it's the crucible that makes men do insane things. And I won't go so far as to agree with the German architects of that ideology, but ultimately, I think sport takes out a little tiny bit of that crucible, right. Like through the crucible of like doing these hard things; triathlon, cycling, handball, whatever it is, right. Like you name the sport that is in and of itself this little battle, right, this like much more civilized battle. But by doing that battle, we gained something, about ourselves, about our sense of duty, about our sense of belonging about our ability of resilience of grit to go out and finish a triathlon is always a success. Because not that it's necessarily like, “Oh, it's what an empowering journey I did this.” But no, but it's the fact that you did the journey at all, and got through to the end, that's the crucible, right. Like you got through the heat. So, yeah, so bring it back together, I think sport is very, is the, you know civilized people answer to war and that desire, these animalistic instincts in us have to be quelled somewhere, and so we put them there. So, it's very much a function of biology I suppose if you were to believe that's an element analogy, but yeah, I don't know. So, that's my answer. I think it's very animalistic. It's an intrinsic thing. But yeah, we'll see. Let me know if somebody else comes up with such a-- JESSE: Well, the year’s just going so I've got a whole years worth of people to ask this question. So, we'll have to see what everybody else comes up with this year. Like the answers about the food last year was always interesting because it was like, you get a divergence of two answers. You get people say almost PC answers, like salad or something. And then the majority of people would be like-- So, I asked what's a recovery food, if you could only choose one recovery food for the rest of your life, what do you choose? And most people would be like, beer, pizza, ice cream, like something that makes them feel good, rather than necessarily fuels their body. So, it is like, this is a little more esoteric of a question. But I’m-- EVAN: ?? 19:23> and a man who listens to a copious amount of audiobooks. So, esoteric, just, ah ?? 19:35> two hours that we're just going to essentially argue about the entire like premise of theater and things. So, I mean, you know, come on, you threw me a great bone. I mean, we can have a two-hour discussion on this. JESSE: Well yeah, we can keep going but like I said we're probably-- we're overtime here. So, I'll have to have you on another time. EVAN: Sure. JESSE: And if people want to find you, where can they find you, see what you're doing, see what-- ?? 20:01> EVAN: Sure. I post somewhat often on my Instagram, it’s just Evan Pardi. If you want to get in contact with me, I'm on Facebook. I also have a website, EvanPardiTriathlon. I'm also my-- I'm sponsored this year by Speed Hound, which is a kind of a new grassroots Endurance Sports company out of California run by a great guy trying to get triathlon products to people at a much fairer price, kind of cutting out some of the middlemen. And so some great things coming out of that company that I'm associated with, hopefully in this next year, so keep an eye out for that as well. That's some ongoing, interesting projects coming up from them. But yeah, I think that's about it. JESSE: Thanks for spending some time with me, Evan. EVAN: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me on. Go to Part 1 Go to Part 2

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Smart Athlete Podcast Ep. 40 - Evan Pardi - EMBRACING COMMUNITY - Part 3 of 3