365QOD-Day76

"You are a champion..now what?".

I read an interesting story tonight.  It was from Competitor magazine.  The magazine announces local running races BUT often does a few great stories.

http://www.competitor-digital.com/competitor/201103/#pg1 

In an earlier post I spoke of Roger Bannister who broke the 4 minute mile.  He managed to do something that most people believed was impossible to do at that time without the human heart exploding.

Just when I thought I had heard most stories of pushing human abilities to the max I read about Daniel Komen.  He is a Kenyan runner who is the only human being to have run 2 sub 4 minute miles.  In other words he ran two miles in less than 8 minutes.  WOW!

http://www.competitor-digital.com/competitor/201103/#pg58 

That by itself would have been impressive BUT he won all kinds of other races.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Komen

But that is not why the story was interesting.  To me the story was interesting because he failed to quality for the 1996 and 2000 Olympics BUT in between them set all these records around 1998.  And after failing to get to the 2000 Olympics he disappeared from the sport in 2002.  He now lives comfortably in Kanya.

What caused me to write this blog is the idea that this guy did something more incredible than Bannister, which is by itself great, and yet I had never heard of him.  The story goes on to say that he did it for the money.  It was not a passion of his to run.  WOW!  He managed to set world records that still stand and he only did it for money.

Today's question is:
"How long can you perform at a very high level... just for the money?"