Despite searing pain from a blister on his foot, all John Guilinger '08 could think about with less than one mile to go in his race Sunday was crossing the finish line. In the end, he not only failed to finish the race, but also jeopardized his season.Coach John Evans pulled Guilinger out of the race with just under three quarters of a mile remaining, and without him, the men's cross country team limped to a ninth-place finish out of 19 teams at the Connecticut College Invitational. The women's team finished sixth out of 14 teams at the event.

Guilinger said the blister has spread to the entire bottom of his foot, and he is currently limping around on crutches. He said he expects to return later this season, but the injury should keep him out for at least a couple of weeks.

Although he was frustrated after the race, Guilinger tried to stay upbeat.

"[Getting hurt] is very disappointing, but I'm certainly not the first cross country runner to get injured," he said. "Some of my friends have suffered far, far worse injuries, so when I put it into that light, I'm trying to look at it pretty optimistically."

Guilinger fought the pain throughout the race and was among the leaders, but with a mile to go, the suffering became unbearable.

He tried desperately to finish, even taking off his shoe to run barefoot, but that only made things worse.

Initially, he was upset to let the team down, but refocused his concerns once he took off his sock.

"It was pretty disconcerting to see a pretty significant amount of dead skin not attached to your heel," he said.

The team was already racing without Tim Condon '08, Paul Norton '11, Mike Stone '09 and Dan Suher '08.

Condon reaggravated a knee injury last week, while Norton, Stone and Suher were given the week off to rest.

The rest of the team struggled, finishing with slower times than last week.

Rookie Mekonen Gendebo '11 led the way with a 24th-place finish, but his time of 26 minutes and 18 seconds was 10 seconds slower than last week. Matt Jennings '09, the lone upperclassman to finish the race, ran nearly a minute slower than last week, finishing in 56th place with a time of 26:57.

"I don't know what went wrong," Jennings said. "I guess it was a lot of physiological [problems], but I just didn't recover well from that first race."

Despite his struggles, Jennings said he wasn't worried about his performance. He was far more concerned, however, with Guilinger's injury.

"If I run badly in one of these meets, it's not a huge deal, but if we have someone who gets injured in one of these meets, and is one of our top runners, then it's a problem," Jennings said.

On the women's side, the trio of Katy Agule '09, Marie Lemay '11 and Ally Connolly '08 led the way once again in the six-kilometer run.

Agule finished in 20th place with a time of 24:01 and Lemay was one spot behind her with a time of 24:06. Connolly finished 29th place in 24:26.

The meet was the first six-kilometer event of the season for the women's team. Last week's University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth Invitational consisted of a five-kilometer run, and Agule said she was pleased with how team handled the adjustment.

"I feel that we all handled [the extra distance] really well," she said. "The extra kilometer really isn't that much of a difference. You can feel it, but we want to race the six-kilometer the same way as the five-kilometer."

Agule, however, said she still felt she could have run faster.

"I shouldn't really complain, [because] my legs weren't tired at the end," she said. "It was more [about] my breathing. The heat made it more difficult for me to control it."

The two teams race next at the New England Championships in Boston Oct. 6 at 10 a.m.