Though Claire Berryman is a fifth-year varsity runner and doctoral candidate at Penn State U., running had to take the back seat last summer — when she was unsure whether she would live to see another season.

After the 2009 spring season, Berryman completed her undergraduate work. But after arriving home from school on May 22, she began experiencing severe headaches.

Three days later, what was initially thought to be a simple case of bronchitis was diagnosed as meningitis.

“You hear all the horror stories about meningitis, so I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” Berryman said. “At the time, I think I was worried more about being alive than I was thinking about specifically running.”

Berryman kept her illness — which was never identified as bacterial or viral — a secret to most people close to her, including her teammates. Berryman’s mother, Joyce Berryman, said only a couple of teammates were able to visit her in the hospital. Other close friends, like senior Jessica Babcock, found out only when they contacted Berryman over the summer.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding? Isn’t that the thing you get shots for before you get to college?’ I just couldn’t believe someone could actually get that,” Babcock said. “I knew she could handle it, and I was so glad and thankful that she could get to the hospital and figured everything out.”

Joyce Berryman said Claire was fortunate to have been home when she got sick. Berryman — a Morgantown, W. Va., native — saw her condition begin to improve because medication Claire had already taken for bronchitis started to treat the meningitis, preventing the disease from getting worse.

“We could tell by the way [the doctors] were acting they were expecting her to crash,” Joyce Berryman said. “They thought she was just going to get worse, and that’s where we were very fortunate — she never really got worse. [The doctors] said it was because of the strong antibiotic she had already taken. They called it ‘partially treated meningitis’ when they caught it.”

Once Berryman had her illness under control, her thoughts scattered to whether she infected others, when she could run again and what kind of shape she could be in by the start of cross country season.

“It was really scary because I had been in front of the whole team,” Berryman said. “Obviously, you think meningitis is contagious, but thankfully nobody ended up getting it.”

Wanting badly to run again, Berryman stayed in contact with coach Beth Alford-Sullivan until she was able to finally run on June 9.

“The day I got my I.V. out, I called her and said, ‘OK, Coach, I’m running,’ but [Alford-Sullivan] said, ‘No, you’re not. You better take a few more days off. Just relax and get better,’ ” Berryman said.

Out of commission for more than a month, Berryman was at first able to run for only 15 minutes a day, her tolerance steadily increasing throughout the following couple of weeks. Through the summer, Berryman ran with her mother, West Virginia University runners, her former high school’s track team and by herself.

While taking on the burden of overcoming meningitis, training to get back to where she was and the challenge of her doctoral work, Berryman set two personal record times during indoor while feeling better than ever before.

“I’m probably back to normal or better,” Berryman says now, seven months after the diagnosis. “I’m glad I got back here for cross country, indoor and outdoor. And I’m looking forward to running the 10k and Big Tens. I’m just happy I got a fifth year, and I could train to come back here.”

On Feb. 22 at the indoor Big Ten championships, Claire won her heat of the 3,000-meter race. It was a great feeling, and her parents were in the audience. Not only did Berryman win the heat, but the time was a personal record, the second she recorded during the indoor season.

Berryman credits her doctor, Rashida Khakoo, and Khakoo’s staff at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown with saving her life and helping her through the recovery.

“Everything that happened, I was so lucky,” Berryman said. “That I went home when I did, that the doctors made me get the spinal tap. They said, ‘If you were my sister, I’d tell you to get the spinal tap.’ And during the one week of the entire year, [Khakoo], the chief of infectious disease, is on the floor and she was just amazing. I feel so lucky that so many things went right.”

Fully recovered, Berryman ran what Alford-Sullivan called a “tremendous” cross country season last fall. She followed that up with an indoor season that featured her two personal-record times, including the 9 minute, 56.79 second 3,000-meter race at the Big Ten championships and a 5:04.74 mile at the Sykes-Sabock meet, both at Penn State in front of family and her home crowd.

Alford-Sullivan said Berryman, the most senior distance runner on the team, overcame her obstacles in great fashion to return to the team the way she has.

“To run as well as she is right now on the track, it’s a testimony to her spirit and her will to stay after this,” Alford-Sullivan said. “She did a great job, the doctors did a great job with her, and she’s a committed and dedicated young lady that just got back in shape and stayed after it.”

Dedicated as ever, Berryman is in an entry study contributing to her thesis research in nutrition. She works as early as 7 a.m until her 3:45 p.m. practice, where she runs until 6 p.m.

Heading into spring, her final season as a varsity runner, Berryman will run the 5,000 and her best race, the 10,000-meter. And Berryman already has some specific goals for her final season, which she will begin to go after at this weekend’s Bucknell Team Challenge.

Berryman doesn’t think she’s done setting personal-best times. The goal both she and Alford-Sullivan have is to beat her own best 10,000-meter time of 36:41.03 at the Big Ten championships.

Most runners are able to run the 10,000 only a couple of times a season because of stamina concerns. So while holding off on the race until the Big Tens, Berryman is looking forward to other events this season.

“I want to break the five-minute mark eventually or the equivalent in the 1500-meters,” Berryman said. “I want to break 17:00 in the 5k, and it would be awesome to hit the provisional mark [16:44], too.”

Berryman faced a scary situation but looking back, she said except for the first few hours at the hospital, running never left her mind.

“I felt like the longer I waited to get back, the more behind I was going to be,” Berryman said. “But at no point did I think I was never going to run again.”