Over the past few weeks, a number of friends have reached out to ask me “how to start running.” My first reaction is always to doubt my ability to answer this question. I’m not a certified coach, I’m not the fastest runner around, and, in the grand scheme of things, I haven’t been doing this running thing for that long. I just really love this sport and have found a whole new wonderful world in the community that is running.

A few weeks ago, Slate published an article with the pointed title, ‘Don’t run a marathon. You have better things to do.’ While this is a pretty classic case of Internet click-bait, and I would really rather not give Daniel Engber the satisfaction of increased web traffic and comments on his provocation, I have to admit: I opened the link. As a runner who, just last month, signed up for her first marathon, I couldn’t help myself… The click-bait worked.