I disagree. I've been on retreats (not Buddhist ones but close enough.) One thing that a retreat will do that regular practice won't, is give you a taste of the mindset and attitude you are attempting to get. The author doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would have easily adopted a meditation regime. After this retreat, it seems like he might be more capable or at least motivated to integrate one.

It's pretty much impossible to get as focused and steady in tiny spurts of meditation mixed in with the turmoil of daily life as it is when doing it essentially non-stop for days/weeks.

Once you've dived into it deeply, then you actually have an understanding of what's going on when you do regular sittings.

Think of meditation as a pot of water you're trying to boil away.

A retreat is a chance to get that pot of water to a boil. Once there, a little meditation each day will continue to boil the pot.

Without the focused immersion, a little heat each day might never boil the pot.

Note that this works for languages, physical skills (aikido) and many other complex tasks.

And going back into the world analogous to having a cold shower. How much is undone?

I'd say it depends on many factors. If you immediately go out and get hammered and get very little sleep for a few days in a row, the changes will probably vanish much more quickly than if you being regularly applying some of the discipline you learned.

You can take a cold shower, or you can ride the momentum that the retreat gave you and keep the shower lukewarm. Sometimes it even gets hot and really nice feeling and you don't want to get out, but then after that kind of shower, even drying off feels good.

Meditation is learned skill in a way that "running" in your example doesn't seem to be. Ten days of practice is more than just "ten more days of meditation in my life"; it's a hundred hours of improvement. A more reasonable comparison would be to say that a meditation retreat is like going off and doing math for ten days straight. (I've actually done the latter, and it's shocking how much you can learn and improve in a week and a half if you completely dedicate yourself to something. Total immersion really is very very powerful.)

and that week was a complete waste of time if you don't have mathematics integrated into your daily life

The idea is that you continue to meditate regularly after the retreat. It will be much less practice, but it will build on the experience and monumentum you got during the retreat.

You need both.

Precisely. Retreats (or equivalent period of intense focus) can help you get started or help you break through a plateau, but they mean little without sustained practice.

Of course, if you hit a plateau in that sustained practice or have a hard time getting started, a dedicated retreat may be just what you need.

You revert back to your own habits if you stop meditating everyday after "taking refuge in the Buddha".

Just stop reading a journalist's crap and try to read something that worth it ^_^

http://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Spiritual-Materialism-Shambhal... is a good starting point.