two glimpses of long views

[bronze_ribbons]

From Pete Rea's article in the May 2005 Running Journal:

Eight days after winning the 5000 meter and 10000 meter races at the 1972 Olympic in Munich, Lasse Viren met with his coach to discuss the plan for success in the next Olympics in 1976. "We decided we would need to run roughly 25,000 miles in the four years preceding Montreal," Viren told the French magazine Le Equipe in a 1989 interview, "and that we would not run a single race for two years to build up background." Viren defended his Olympic title[s] four years later.

And more from Anthony Bourdain:

[Mr Togawa, the sushi-chef]'s hands flew, twirled, an entire ballet with ten digits. It had taken him, he told me, three years, during his training and apprenticeship, just to be considered as having mastered rice alone. For three years in his first kitchen, it had been all he'd been allowed to touch.