Shana Cox opened her 2007 season with an assault on the record books.

On Friday night, in her first action of the season, Cox, along with Megan Hutchinson, Brienne Simmons and Bridget Franek set a new Penn State record in the Distance Medley Relay, with a time of 11 minutes, 14.78 seconds.

On Saturday, Cox ran the 400 meters in a time of 52.31 seconds to set a Penn State record as well as a facility record. Her time automatically qualified her for the NCAA championships, and was the fastest run by an NCAA athlete all season, as well as the second-fastest run in the world this year.

In the 4x400 meter relay, Cox helped the team of Simmons, Aleesha Barber and Gayle Hunter turn in an NCAA provisional qualifying time of 3:38.13 despite a dropped baton.

Cox did not compete the past two weeks because she did not start training as soon as the rest of the team. Last summer, Cox ran for the USA Track and Field program, and because of this, her season did not end until August, whereas a normal college season would end around the end of June.

"It wasn't really a big deal," Cox said. "I've pretty much had the same time off as everybody else, but I just took it later on."

Head coach Beth Alford-Sullivan was encouraged that Cox was able to maintain a high level throughout all of her races this weekend.

"It's very encouraging that she's at that kind of endurance this early in the season because at the conference championships she's going to have a lot of races," she said. "At the national championships she could potentially have a lot of races."

After finishing first in the 200- and 400-meter events at last year's Big Ten Outdoor Championships, Cox has made it her goal to improve her ability on the indoor track.

"To execute my race and really learn how to run a 400 is something I kind of had a little bit of a problem with last year indoors, so I want to get to the same spot where I was outdoors in terms of effectively executing my race," she said.