Harvard's cross-country team begins the long, long road to the Heptagonal championships today, as they travel to New York for a relaxing triangular meet with Columbia and Penn. Despite their third place finish in last week's triangular with Brown and Cornell, the Crimson harriers are overwhelming favorites to run away with the meet at Columbia's Van Cortland Park.

The only obstacle to a Crimson sweep is the Lion's Conway a sophomore who appears very promising in his first varsity season. Yet Columbia is weak as a team. They lost to Yale 19-40 last week, and there are certainly no rumblings of greatness from this year's New Haven aggregation.

Penn's prowess is slightly harder to determine, but it is not impressive under any analysis. In their first meet on October 2, the Quakers were buried by Rutgers in no uncertain fashion.

Somewhat Merciful

Unfortunately, the Crimson will not be able to slaughter their opponents unmercifully. Both Bill Crain and John Ogden, the number three and number four runners for Harvard, have been sick during the week. Ogden will not compete, and Crain will only be able to run at half-speed.

Perhaps the only interesting contest of the meet will be sophomore ace Walt Hewlett versus the clock. Hewlett lost his first race of the season last week to Cornell's Jim Byard, but he will probably be out to redeem himself in New York today. He will also not face any stiff competition until he meets Byard again in the Heps; none of the other Ivy schools have runners of equivalent caliber.

A week from today, the team will make another trip into the depths of the Ivy League to meet Dartmouth at Hanover. If that meet will be as boring as today's, it will be better in one respect. The team will be given a beautiful bus ride through New Hampshire.