The best cross-country distance runners push through the pain at around the three-mile mark. They ignore the numbness in their calves, the burning in their lungs and the queasiness in their stomach.
When they finally get to the finish line, they collapse to the ground, frequently helped off by coaches and sometimes, stretchers.
Penn senior Sean McGinley knows all about that pain. Throughout high school and his freshman year on the Quakers men's track team, he was able to ignore it and focus on completing the race.
But after training during the summer before his sophomore year, McGinley felt some aching and stiffness in his knee. He tried to work through it, but the ground that was once his constant of solitude now seemed toxic.
The diagnosis came back: tendonitis of the knee - a devastating injury for a collegiate runner. McGinley spent his entire sophomore season on the sidelines and vowed to be back on the course the next year.
Again he trained all summer, more dedicated than ever. He wore orthotics as a corrective measure. Again, the pain returned, seemingly worse than ever. And although tendonitis cost him his junior year, too, he never quit.
"It was frustrating to have to sit back and say 'Oh well, there's next season,'" McGinley said.
"I always thought in high school that I'd quit if something like that happened. But once it did, it just made me try harder. It's motivating - I have to make up for lost time."
He has his chance this cross-country season, as a senior expected to lead a Red and Blue team that overachieved last season in finishing third at Heptagonals.
Yet that squad included standouts Reid McEwen, Brian Goldberg and Larry Contrella - all of whom are now graduated.
Rather than worrying about this season, Penn coach Charlie Powell is looking forward to it as an opportunity to showcase his gifted, yet relatively untested, sophomores.
"We lost some top people and their leadership," he said. "It will be interesting to see what we can do without them. We have a very, very young group. They'll grow up in the heat of battle."
Among the sophomores running behind McGinley and fellow senior Brian Trembley will be Luke Grau, Anguel Tolev, Chris Baird and Phil Cawkwell.
Tolev will participate in the 6000-meter race at Old Nassau Run at Princeton, N.J., while the others (including McGinley and Trembley) will run the 8K.
Powell expects the meet to have a preseason feel, allowing him to figure out how to best use his personnel over the season. He's not expecting Penn to immediately pick up from where it left off. Instead, he's hoping to "fly under the radar" and let his young team's talent will shine through.
When it comes to cross-country running, though, heart and desire are even more important than talent.
"It's like a prizefight, man versus man," Powell said. "It takes a very tough-minded person, someone with good character and good knowledge of himself to push through some outrageous barriers."
Luckily for Powell, the team is being led by McGinley. Pushing through outrageous barries? Been there, done that.
And though the season hasn't even started yet, McGinley's already set himself another hurdle: leaving a legacy.
"I don't think I'm going to graduate and be the greatest runner ever, because I'm not," he said. "But I'd like to be remembered."
"Now I'm a senior, so this is my last chance - I'm not going to waste it. If it isn't this season, if it isn't now, it's never."
