Today at 10 a.m., the men’s country team, and the women’s team an hour later, will step to the line in frigid conditions against a plethora of premier competitors at the Penn State National. Under assistant coach Robert Johnson, the men’s team will race against an Ivy League rival, Yale, and nationally ranked No. 10 Georgetown among other teams. After the men’s race, the women’s team, coached by Lou Duesing, will face off against a field including several nationally ranked programs: No. 3 West Virginia, No. 16 Penn State and No. 23 Michigan.

Junior runner Nate Edelman leads the men’s team, which is currently ranked sixth in the Northeast. Edelman is coming off a record-breaking performance — a Cornell-best 23:42 on Lehigh’s 8k course — and hopes to remain with the front pack throughout the Penn State National. Early morning jog: The men’s cross country team will have to contend with cold weather in University Park, Pa.

“I know Georgetown is a top-10 team with some really good runners,” said Edelman. “So I’m going to try and stay with them and we’ll see what happens.”

The men will be racing as a team for the first time since its seventh-place finish at Lehigh’s Paul Short Invitational. However, the Red will be missing key runner Matt De Silva, who will be at a job interview for the Johnson Business School. De Silva, a junior who transferred from Purdue this year, is the Red’s No. 2 runner and finished 32nd overall with a time of 24:22 at Lehigh.

“That will definitely hurt our team chances,” Johnson said. “But the other guys I want to step up will have to now because Matt won’t be there.”

Strategically, Johnson wants to focus on maintaining a minimal top-5 spread — the time between the first and fifth runners’ finish. Also, Johnson would like an enhanced overall team performance.

“I’m looking for our guys in the 3,4,5 positions to step up,” Johnson said. “We had a 68-second spread between our first and fifth guys. Nate is really good but I’d like to see that come down.”

The women’s team expects senior Stephanie Pancoast to lead the way at Penn State. As a whole, the team finished fifth out of forty teams at Lehigh and hopes to maintain its momentum. Pancoast, like Edelman, highlighted the Red’s race with a Cornell record: 20:43 on Lehigh’s 6k course and a 16th place overall finish.

The women’s team will also look to freshman Genna Hartung and Katie Kellner to continue their strong performances. Hartung, who ran a 21:05, set the third best Cornell time at the Paul Short Invitational and Kellner, who ran a 21:24, set the fourth best.

Duesing, who is entering his 19th year at Cornell, sees the Penn State National as an indicator of where the team is with regards to fitness and emphasizes the importance of unequivocal effort throughout the race.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Duesing said. “We’re racing against some very good teams. All that anyone can ask is to go out and give the best effort that you can. And if everyone does that, then it will mean that…we have done quality work.”

Both the men’s and women’s teams also underscored the importance of starting the race quickly. Since the Penn State course begins on a downhill and ends with an uphill stretch, attaining positioning early in the race is crucial.

“We’ll have to get out early. It’s not the type of course where a lot of people are going to come back, “ Duesing said. “You have to go out and make sure you’re in the right race running against the people you want to be running against.”

Thus, in the chilly drizzle at University Park, Pa., expect both the women and men’s teams to sprint out quickly at the sound of the gun and finish strong in their final large-scale races before Heptagonals.