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Place is simply a function of who else shows up. Don't sweat it. If a quarter of the nation of Kenya showed up at any given race, guaranteed that all the top places would be taken by guys with funny biblical names. Place is only something you should even think about if you've got money on the outcome with another runner.
I'm going to go against the grain here a bit and tell you that it's probably too early to worry about speed in any form. Right now, just concentrate on doing at least 3.1 miles/5k without stopping. That's your goal, not a time or place. Just finishing it without walking. Conventional wisdom says that you really need to be able to do more like 3.5 miles because of race-day excitement, etc., but I don't buy into that.
Something that might help is to get yourself a street map of the local area. Plot out some courses with specific distances, starting with 1 mile and working up to, say, 5 miles (goals, baby, goals), with the start/finish point being wherever you usually run from (home, work, gym, whatever). If possible, try to make a few of them go by some interesting things. By that, I mean things to look at.
Speed can, in a lot of ways, take care of itself, especially if you know your own motivations. Personally (and this should come as absolutely no surprise to 9er), I'm a bit of a hotdog, so I unconciously speed up when I see attractive women. Apparently I can be a giant pain to run with when in there's a crowd that might turn into an audience in my twisted little mind. Perhaps the same will be true for you.
If not, the phone pole idea is tried and true. There's all sort of fun (at least for me) things you can do to build speed, but really the best possible way to train to run a faster 5k (not that you're worried about that right now - you're worried about finishing) is simply to do your training runs faster. It's a lot easier to run 7 minute miles in a race if you're used to running 7:30 miles in training every day.
One last piece of advice, and this is from personal experience: being in kick-ass 5k shape absolutely does not imply in any way, shape or form that you're capable of running a marathon with no additional training.
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