The tailgaters won't be there.
There will not be tens of thousands of people ready to scream.
The dew will be fresh. The sun will have come up an hour earlier.
Jeremy Criscione doesn't mind.
The senior cross country star holds school records in both the 5-mile and 8K and is one of the odds-on favorites for Saturday's Mountain Dew Invitational, and yet many students don't even his name.
But for him, this sure beats watching from the sidelines.
Criscione had hernia surgery on Aug. 3, 2007, causing him to miss the opening meet, the Gators' only home competition.
He missed 10 or 11 days of practice.
But the season that would follow inspired confidence that may have been a blessing in disguise.
He remembers worrying about being fully healed during his first workout.
It went fine.
Then there were worries about his first race, the Auburn Invitational. All Criscione did was turn in a career-best time in the 8K.
He felt the time could have been misleading by a forgiving course.
The worries were unfounded.
The senior broke a 14-year-old school record in the 8K the following week, and all the concerns were forgotten.
But Criscione knew a little differently. Doctors were telling him he was OK, but he could still feel the stitches and mesh from the surgery. Jabs of pain shot through him occasionally.
"You always question if it came back or if something tore again."
It didn't, and doctors tell him now there's a negligible chance of it recurring. Sometimes he still feels a pang or two but nothing compared to the loneliness felt at last year's NCAA meet.
While the UF women qualified as a team for last year's NCAA Championships, the men did not. So as Criscione lined up at the start - he qualified as an individual - he felt the difference of having no pack to hunt with.
"You don't ever want to get on a starting line with 250 other runners, and you're the only one from your team."
Todd Morgan has stepped up as the main coach leading the cross country team this fall, and he has seen a lot of development in his star senior.
"He's just really got his head down, showing up every day, clocking in, getting the work," Morgan said. "We learned a lot with Jeremy last year."
It's a lesson Morgan and Criscione want this team to take to heart - it's not how you start, it's how you finish.
During Criscione's freshman and sophomore years, the Gators peaked midway through the season, and their mid-season rankings were always higher than their finishes at the NCAA meet.
Last season, the team did not qualify for nationals.
While some of this can be attributed to pushing too early in the season, there's another factor at play here.
Cross Country races usually come in two varieties for men - 8K and 10K.
UF runs in 8K races all the way until NCAA Regionals and Championships. Those last two meets - by far, the most important - are 10K-length.
This year is Criscione's last chance to have a successful finish to his career.
Then again, he just finished up another chase in his life - looking for the 1999 Walt Disney documentary/drama "Endurance."
The senior had watched a part of the movie many years ago but was unable to find a copy to finish it, despite intense Internet searches.
The trail came to an end Wednesday when Criscione borrowed a copy from his coach.
With that complete, the pair will turn back to the unsolved mystery of how to get the Gators to produce at the NCAA Championship meet.
Similar success seems likely.
