open ADOP cycle

I'm aware of the fact that when using ADOP, the cycle is meant to be open as short as possible, but I wonder what would be the exact kind of issues when you do this:

Patches get requested on unknown dates for a given test environment. Running a prepare takes around 30 to 60 minutes depending on the environment. So, to avoid needing that time, I can do the ADOP prepare phase in advance.

But, when you do, it is possible that it takes a long time, before any patch is actually applied. We're talking about 1 week or so. And, it's possible NO request arrives, so no patch to install.