"...My body told me to quit a couple of miles ago..."

I've never been any sort of  an athlete. I'm accident prone and have an extreme lack of motivation, but at the beginning of the summer I made a goal. My goal was to participate in an organized race. I sat down at the computer and looked for a race that looked do-able. I found  Cooper's Run and marked July 26th on my calendar. I had never ran 3 consecutive miles before so I was kinda nervous but I knew that I could start working on it and be fine. This was in early June and I really procrastinated my training. I ran a mile a couple of times during June, but not nearly enough to count as "training" for this race. Two weeks ago I really got serious. I had waited too long and I was getting so nervous that I started having dreams about falling during the race and dying or the race being cancelled all together. I really wanted to do well and be able to finish the race. I started running a mile about everyday to get my body used to running. On Friday night before the race I layed in my bed and all I could think of was that I had never run the full 3 miles before. I was so so nervous and I wanted to barf. It was that excited nervous, though. I knew that as soon as I was done I would be so happy with myself and my accomplishment, I knew that I would be able to do it. I was about to achieve my goal and by 10:00 the next morning it would all be over.
I got to the race a little early and my insides were going nuts. I could not keep still to save my life. I tried listening to music to relax myself a little bit but nothing seemed to really work. Finally the race began. The first mile was the hardest. I flew through mile 2 and 3. As I was running toward the Finish line/timer (and the fireman who soaked me with the fire hose-not fun) all I could think about was how I had just done what I never thought was even slightly possible. I finished at 46:30. My original goal time was 45:00. I'm not even slightly disappointed with my time, It just gives me a new goal- Run a 5k in under 46:30. I am so excited to start running more 5k's and hopefully work up to some longer, more challenging races!

^ Courtney and I at the finish line 

Running my little heart out^