Even if the men's cross country team would break the course record tomorrow, it wouldn't be that important.

"Time is less important than who you beat," Coach Harry Groves said.

The team has been preparing for the Spiked Shoe Invitational, its first competition of the season, simply by just running a lot. The race will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the Intramural Field across from Rec Hall.

"We've been getting hard mileage in to get a base," junior Bob Hamer said.

The Spiked Shoe, hosted by Penn State, will bring in 13 regional colleges including Pitt, Lehigh and Penn.

"We get to meet some of the people we don't see anymore," Groves said.

Although the Lions don't usually meet with these schools, there should be good competition from Penn and Lehigh.

"Penn's got a real nice team," Hamer said. "They'll have some guys hanging around the front."

The dark horse may be Lehigh. Groves said that although they haven't been that great in past years, their new coach is taking advantage of Lehigh's facitlities to change the program.

Even though Hamer is confident the Lions will do well, he realizes they have to run aggressively.

"We can't take anything for granted," he said.

Although the teams don't have to declare which seven runners will count for scoring, Groves said, he expects the team to go out hard, because it is working toward the end of the season.

"We're trying to get the seven best guys to get up there and do some fighting," he said.

To be successful as a team, Groves said the Lions have "got to get a solid group of runners that's in close."