TINY MILER Frances Koons, cancer slowly growing on her left kidney, stared out of the window on the ninth floor of the Penn Towers building.

She leaned over the wooden bench and the fake plant in the elevator lobby and gazed at Franklin Field, her running Mecca: the familiar white flagpoles, the top eight rows of bleachers on the north side, the arched arcade in brown brick.

Ten months ago, Koons and her mother, Lisa, came to the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania to make sure the initial diagnosis was right: that she had clear cell renal cell carcinoma, a disease usually reserved for smokers over 40. It is virtually unseen in 21-year-old women, especially ultrafit runners with Olympic aspirations.

The elevator dinged. They boarded, glided to the ground floor, strolled to a restaurant for hamburgers and commiseration and silence before heading home to Allentown; perhaps heading away, forever, from her All-America career at Villanova, a career crippled for months by the cancer.

Frances finished her burger and, softly, she asked her mother for an indulgence: "Can we just go over there to Franklin Field? I just need a minute."