Words by others

"In general successful athletes focus on performance/winning, and then look at the pathways necessary to get to that point. Many amateur athletes look at the pathways more than they do at the goal." By Will Gadd, a self-described and world renowned "multi-sport mountain athlete" from Canmore Alberta.
He has an interesting blog, where he often talks about training principles and his views on performance from a variety of angles. I've enjoyed his recent string of posts, where I saw the above quote.
The quote comes back to the point that a lot of people want to know the secret formula, magic pill, or short cut that make the elite stand out, when in fact, regardless of the sport, successful athletes are successful largely because of their drive and work ethic, which some might call a sport/training approach, plan, or philosophy, directed at well defined goals. This is the meat and potatoes of their success, the rest is mostly chaff.
Of course innate talent also helps, but it is not a golden ticket on its own. There are lots of supposedly "talented" athletes, but few successful elites.

In reading Will's blog, I'm also reminded that it's useful to cast your information net broadly. You can get a lot useful, interesting and generalizable information from a wide range of sources, so stay curious and move beyond your usual resources and websites from time to time, I'm sure you'll find something of interest.
In fact, I'll go as far as to say that passion for a sport, or any topic for that matter, can be measured by a person's level of curiosity in that subject. When they stop asking questions and looking for answers, then their passion has probably died.
Not all the questions and answers need to, or should, come from books, journals, blogs etc... they can also come from the curiosity of exploring ones personal limits and seeking out new experiences. I guess this curiosity makes up the, "look(ing)at the pathways necessary to get to that point", that Will references above.