Mile by mile.

I am not the brightest star in the sky.

Don't get me wrong; I get by OK. But I'm easily fooled. Even by myself.

Typically, I wake up 20-30 minutes before my alarm goes off. I snooze off and on until 3:58 a.m., when I turn off my alarm and go get dressed to run.

This morning, I woke up when the alarm went off. And I did not want to run.

"Just go out there and run two miles," I told myself. "Just two. And then you can quit."

So I got dressed and headed out.

Near the end of my second mile, I told myself, "Why don't you go ahead and run another one? C'mon. You have to do at least a 5K."

So I did.

And then I told myself, "You know, you're already up. It's not like you're going to go back to sleep when you get in the house. Why don't you run two more? Just five, Beth. That's all. Just five."

So I did.

I went from not wanting to run at all, to running just two miles, to running just a 5K, to running five whole miles (in less than 40 minutes, by the way).

All because I talked myself into it...