Most of the Penn State women's cross country team will train at home this week.

Coach Beth Alford-Sullivan will send 12 runners that did not make the trip to the William & Mary Invitational this past weekend to Lock Haven for Saturday's Lock Haven Invitational.

The Nittany Lions will face off against teams from Mercyhurst, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Shippensburg, Mansfield, Wheeling Jesuit (W.Va.), Clarion, Bloomfield, (N.J.), Bloomsburg, the College of St. Rose, Alderson Broaddus College (W.Va.), and host school Lock Haven.

"It's going to be a good opportunity for the runners who didn't get a chance to run last week to travel to a competition, and put together a good race," Alford-Sullivan said. "There are very few opportunities for us to let these runners travel, and its nice to get them out to run in an away meet, and to give them some experience."

Included in the crew are juniors Krista Gahagen and Katy Bradley, sophomores Amy Wyka and Lizzie Gati, and freshmen Kati Hughes, Shauna Koenig, Nadia Malcolm, Jen Maline, Chloe Murdock, Michelle Nash, and Marisol Solano. Junior Krista Gahagen is excited at the chance to travel, and to run in a smaller meet than her first this season — the Spiked Shoe Invitational.

"I was pleased with my first race," she said. "But it's going to be nice to have a chance to run in a race that won't be so overwhelming.

"Everyone's always really excited to travel. It's a nice opportunity, and we all want to prove we can do well."

Sophomore Amy Wyka is also anticipating the opportunity, and hopes to convert this chance into an eventual spot on the travel squad.

"I feel if I can run well this weekend, it will put me in a position to travel more," she said. "I also think it will help me to run closer to the front, because I can usually push myself more and run a better time and a better overall race if I'm closer to the front."

Freshman Chloe Murdock will be running in the first away meet of her collegiate career Saturday, and is putting pressure on herself to run the kind of race that will get her on the road more often.

"I'm not getting any pressure from my teammates or the coach," she said. "But I am putting pressure on myself to do something special in this race. I just think the more runners there are pushing themselves for a travel spot, the better off we will be as a team."

The remaining runners will have a hard training week as they prepare for next Saturday's National Invitational, held at Penn State. The Nittany Lions are getting close to the home stretch with the Big Ten Championships just two meets away.

"It's going to be a very hard week for those not racing," senior co-captain Beth Buchheit said. "We're going to be getting a lot of hard work done. Everyone came off last week's race feeling really good about the direction the team was heading, and everyone knows that we're almost at the point where it's really time to start racing better."