Ideally, the Michigan women's cross country team would like to be hitting its stride going into Saturday's Big Ten championship.
Instead, the Wolverines had two sub-par races in a row and are desperate to find the form that they began the season with so impressively.
Adding to Michigan's challenge of breaking out of its mid-season slump is the fact that sophomores Pauline Arnill, Eileen Fleck and Michelle Slater, the team's three injured stars who were expected to return to action in the fall, are out for the season.
Coach Mike McGuire has accepted the fact that the team will get no additional help in the crucial part of the year.
"This is (our team)," McGuire said. "We have to dance with the people we've been dancing with before."
The Wolverines underwent hard practices last week, and their workload will taper off this week, which is standard procedure leading into important meets. On Friday, the Wolverines' top runners sat out of the Eastern Michigan Invitational, so that they would not wear themselves out before next Saturday.
McGuire said that racing on Friday would not have been a good idea, even though getting revenge on Eastern Michigan, which beat the Wolverines two weeks ago, would be satisfying.
"(Competing on Friday) would have been racing four weeks in a row, which we never do," he said. "We can get back at Eastern at the district (championships)."
The bottom line for the Wolverines is that the race at Eastern Michigan was not nearly as important as Big Tens are, and they must concentrate on next Saturday accordingly.
"We're hoping to get focused on the Big Tens," McGuire said. "If we can't get fired up for (Saturday), then we have to check some (our of runners') pulses."
The runners have attempted to take McGuire's words to heart in practice for the past week and pay attention only to the Big Tens.
"We've tried to be really focused, especially in our hard workouts," said freshman Allison Noe, who placed highest for the Wolverines in the last full-squad meet.
The team, with its determined attitude in practice, is looking to return to its form at the beginning of the season. The Wolverines were undefeated in invitational meets and nationally ranked before losing to Eastern Michigan.
To Noe, getting back to running the way they were in the early season means believing in themselves.
"I think that we have to go (into the Big Tens) with a lot of confidence," she said. "We have to go back to the way we were running at the beginning of the season."
With no star to consistently place in the top five of races, the Wolverines have to get good races out of a number of runners in a race to do well, which they have not been able to do in the last two competitions.
"We have to have everybody run well on the same day," Noe said. "Recently we haven't had (that)."