Tired of this analogy

ORN: 4 miles, 1.2 degrees, 29:31. Trying to push the speed a little bit, but still recovering from yesterday's speed workout. Tomorrow should be an easy day as well, since Saturday's long run is prboably going to exceed 17 miles.

I'm getting really tired of this kind of analogy:

Writing is a lot like exercising. If you wanted to run the Boston marathon (and a novel is definitely the marathon run of fiction writing), you wouldn't simply enter yourself, show up on race day, and expect your natural talent to take you to the finish.

What's wrong with it? Well, for starter's, you can't simply "enter yourself" in the Boston Marathon - there are entry requirements, which is one of the reasons why Boston is so tough. I understand and appreciate that many people use Boston as some sort of default (when discussing marathons), but a better analogy would be Chicago or New York. The novel equivalent to running Boston is more like getting your novel published - almost anyone can actually write a novel (which is the rationale behind NaNoWriMo), but getting published is something special.