Anyone you ask would probably tell you that training for an event – like a marathon, bike tour or any sort of strenuous, planned, physical performance – is a long process. (That’s one of the central plot lines of Rocky, after all.) The performance itself is just the bit you see.
It’s not original, but my metaphor of choice is the iceberg – the performance on the day of is the visible bit and the training and planning is this enormous mass below. For me, at my age, even the small things take time: like waking up early enough to do what needs to be done each and every day for the next 472 days.
I need that sort of lead time: it has taken me several months make getting up before 9am a routine. Today was the day I realized I need to be getting up about 30 minutes before I currently am: it’s summer and the gym is hardly in use but there’s a wait for the machines I use more often than not. And besides, traffic has suddenly gotten a lot worse on my rides to and from the gym (which, as currently timed, puts on the road just as the morning rush hour is peaking).
I suppose another metaphor would be peeling an onion, but I don’t have the time right now to explain that one.