Lex did some warm up stretches as he got ready for the upcoming obstacle course. Mentally, he was also planning out exactly how much time he could spend on the course.
He had two time sensitive quests waiting for him.
The first quest, with a time limit of six months, was to make a total of 10 taverns. Fortunately he already had a few, so he only needed to make some more over the next few months. To expedite the process, he had Mary tell Orin to begin creating the foundation for the remaining taverns so that Lex could come and complete them - no time could be wasted.
It was most certainly not considered cheating if he had someone else complete the quest for him - he was just being a good CEO and delegating tasks.
