Paternalism and medicine have a storied past that is difficult to grasp in the abstract. For me, the values of autonomy and beneficence were cemented on the day I ran my second marathon. After the first one, I remember being asked what the hardest part of the race was. “Every mile was harder than the last,” I replied. After that day I felt like I was in the best shape of my life, dampened only by having fallen nine minutes short of my goal. Resilient, I recovered for a week, trained for three and then raced again in the Indianapolis Monument Marathon.