The long jump finals were over for nearly an hour, but still the PIAA officials sat in folding chairs, unwilling to give up the best seats to the best show of the weekend. 

The 4x400 relays at the 2015 PIAA Track & Field championships at Shippensburg University were set to begin 20 minutes after the completion of the 200 meter dash Saturday afternoon. 

"It has so much history in track and field," said PIAA official Pete Clark before the AA girls' took their place for the first of four relay finals. 

"So many competitions have come down to stringing together four people who can run a quarter of a mile at the end of the day. 

"The half-mile is still a pace race. This, this is the best speed and the best endurance."

It is a punishing distance. 

Longer races allow for more pacing; shorter distances expect more speed in a shorter amount of time. This is different. This kills you, said Madison Pease, a Wyomissing freshman who came off the track sobbing after her turn in the relay. Later, after Wyomissing took third place, she was fine. 

The pain, for the most part, is momentary.

"Every 400, I go as fast as I can," she said. "When I'm done, I just feel like ... I die."

For the last 100 meters of the race, she cannot see, she said. She cannot feel. She is numb, but just for the brief seconds until the baton is passed. Then the pain begins where the sprint ends.

"I have a love/hate relationship with it," Cheltenham senior Christian Brissettsaid. "I love the feeling when you're done, the feeling after. I hate running during it."

Athletes come off the track spent, throats and hamstrings burning, bending at the waist or kneeling on their knees. They press their heads against the spray-painted end zone and stand up again with tiny black pebbles of turf stuck to sweaty legs. It's almost impossible to discern from tears of joy from tears of pain or disappointment. 

Teammates wear matching uniforms and sometimes matching accessories to add to the team colors: side braids pulled into high ponytails with bows for the girls, bright-colored or patterned socks for the boys.

Those who run before give themselves only a few seconds to pull themselves together before cheering on their running teammates or walking gingerly back to the tent for water for the other runners. One girls' team lounged on their stomachs on the turf behind the finish line after their race ended, toasting each other with the clear plastic cups of water. 

Time and time again, it is their teammates who hold them up when they are broken. 

Trinity Ponton, another of the Wyomissing relay runners, is the one that catches Pease when she crumbles and reminds her over and over, "You're done."

A Penncrest runner shoos off help from officials as her teammate falls to the ground, clutching her shoulder after the Class AAA heats. It's clearly not out of pride or denial of her friend's pain, but because she has seen this before. She knows that to do. 

She tries to lift up her teammate herself with one arm around her back and the other under her friend's legs, then realizes she is too tired to carry her. Instead she pulls her teammate's arm around own shoulders and carries her weight as they watch the third leg of the race: "C'mon, watch her run," she said. "Watch her go."

For as much as track is about the individual -- you vs. the runner in the next lane, you vs. your own limits, you vs. the mental factors -- there is nothing like the bond between the legs of a 4x400 relay team. Many of these athletes have had this race circled since December or even longer before, and the training and preparation includes a massive amount of trust and dedication to your teammates. 

"You're struggling together," said one of the Wyomissing 4x400 girls' team members. None of the relay members can do it without each other, and so you have to count on everyone else. The splits of a 4x400 relay are often faster than an individual 400 race for many athletes.

"You're pushing yourself for your team," Kaitlyn Magrane said.

Sometimes that means that a state championship race can end before it even begins, just because of one runner. During Friday's Class AAA girls' heat, the first runner for one school had a false start. Her team was disqualified and she walked off the track and onto the infield, stoically and upright, until her relay teammates caught up with her halfway across the field and grabbed her on both sides. She fell into their arms, sobbing.

Anything can happen, said a member of the Cheltenham boys' team, which took first place. 

That's what makes it such an incredible race, he continued. You never know how it will end.

For three minutes and some change, the entire stadium is fixated on the will of four runners trying to complete the best 400 meters of their year on the last day of the season.