“How fast do you run a mile?” I asked the group of women who were huddled together near me.

 The announcer had just asked us to line up in fast, middle and slow groups in front of the starting line. This was my first long-distance race. I had no idea how fast I would complete the race compared to other runners.

 “Well, are you a runner?” one woman asked.

I wasn’t a runner, but I was too embarrassed to say so in front of the older, more experienced-looking women. Instead, I said I had been training for the 5K, but this was my first race. That much was true.

 “How fast can you run a mile?” one of them asked me.

 “Ten minutes,” I lied. Ten minutes was my best treadmill time. But outdoors, without the tread forcing me to keep running when I had side stitches that felt like knives, my best time was 11:30.

 “You should go to the back of the middle pack,” the woman said, haughtily.

 I knew I would not be among the fast runners, but I was disappointed that even my fake time was relatively slow.

 I was pretty athletic growing up. Before college, I played basketball and softball and danced as a cheerleader and on competitive dance teams. But when my class load picked up, I exercised less and less until I rarely worked out anymore.

 Then, as I looked in the mirror last April, I noticed that for the first time in my life I was growing a gut. I had flabby arms and my butt was sagging.

 “How could I have let this happen?” I asked myself. I immediately decided to start exercising again.

 I once read online that cardio exercise is the best way to build a six-pack, so I began running three times per week. But I had a problem. I hated running.

 One day in July I noticed the “5K Sport Training” button on my gym’s treadmill. “I could never run a 5K,” I thought to myself. In August I finally mentioned the idea to my boss and several coworkers. I told them I was thinking about running in a 5k on October 10.

 “Me, too,” my boss said.

 I promptly regretted telling her. Now I had to run in the race. I was not going to let my boss outrun me. Before my goal had simply been to not embarrass myself like Michael Scott in the Dunder Mifflin Fun Run Race for the Cure. Now, it was on.

 I started training outside the following week. Even when the weather was cold and drizzly, I ran a 5K one to two times per week. Every second after the first mile was excruciating. I told myself each time a new song played on my iPod that it would be the last song before I reached my apartment — the end of the three-mile course — though I knew I was nowhere near the end. I forced myself to bring down my time by setting the treadmill speed at higher and higher levels.

 I wanted to quit. I had always excelled at every activity I had pursued. But I was not a runner, and I was truly scared of failing.

 A few days before the race I asked my boss how her training was going.

 “Oh, I’m not doing it anymore,” she told me. “I haven’t really had time to run lately.”

 My heart sank. Beating my boss in the race had been my only goal. Running to beat other, faster people was not part of my plan. But I knew I still had to run the race, even if I came in last. I needed to learn that it was OK not to be good at everything.

 The night before the race I went to Body Boutique, the business sponsoring the race, to obtain a race map. The trainers there warned me race day would be the coldest morning we’d had this fall. They were right. The high that day was 40 degrees, yet, I showed up at 7:30 a.m. wearing capri pants and a T-shirt. Everyone else was wearing long-sleeved shirts and running jackets, and many were wearing ear warmers and gloves.

 After standing outside for 10 minutes, I realized I had made a colossal mistake. I remembered my old Verizon Wireless Amphitheater uniform, which consisted of a red and tan three-quarters-length shirt and a goofy, bright red hat, was still in my trunk. I put on the hat and put the VWA shirt on under my running shirt. I didn’t dare look at myself in a mirror.

 I wanted to go home. Suddenly, people around me began running out of the parking lot and toward the neighborhood in front of us, so I did too. I quickly realized the people around me were running too slowly. I quickened my pace. I saw a girl just ahead of me who was a little thicker and older than I was, and I decided I should stick with her. Appearances can be deceiving. I have never seen anyone book it up hills like her. That girl ended up placing less than a second behind the third-place winner of our age division.

 At the two-mile marker, my iPod died. As I fumbled with it, people began passing me. I couldn’t feel my fingers. “Dammit,” I thought. Even my iPod was too cold to continue the race.

 I finally recognized my surroundings. I was only two blocks away from Body Boutique. The finish line was in sight. The race clock flashed 28:58. My adrenaline and instincts kicked in, and I ran down the straightaway and through the finish line like I was finishing a 100-meter dash instead of a three-mile run.

 I had just finished my first 5K in 29:05 — faster than any of my training times — despite all the odds. I placed seventh in my age group — 20- to 29-year-old women — and 24th overall out of the 92 women in the race. The women who placed third and fourth in my division finished in 28:09.

 Once I realized how close I had come to receiving a ribbon, I replayed the race in my mind, wondering what I could have changed. I thought back to the moment just before the race when I stood in front of the starting line unconfident and freezing, looking like I did not belong. I realized I had finished before that group of girls, and my confidence soared.

 If I could change one part of the race, it would have been my conversation with the haughty women at the race’s start.

 “Yes, I am a runner,” I would have said.

 “And I run 10-minute miles. How fast can you run a mile?”