San Diego and Tucson, Ariz. are separated by roughly 400 miles.

A six-hour drive; a one-hour flight.

But when the San Diego State track and field team heads to Arizona for the Jim Click Shootout, taking place today through Saturday, there’s a world of difference between San Diego and Tucson.

SDSU’s last meet was against the likes of UCSD and Slippery Rock.

This meet? Try Arizona, New Mexico and Notre Dame.

So far, SDSU’s season has been little more than a glorified warmup. The indoor season – and the first two meets of the outdoor season – provided few opportunities for the team to test where it stands against national competition.

Basically, the Aztecs have beaten up on teams they were expected to beat up on.

But starting this weekend and going into the Mountain West Conference season, SDSU will finally be tested to the limits of its potential.

“We know the quality of competition is going to be there,” assistant coach Jennifer Nanista said. “(I’m) looking forward to seeing how they continue to respond to the increased level of competition.

“We’re ready to finally have some good conditions, go out there and give some pretty good performances.”

After two weeks of the outdoor season, the Aztecs have been settling into new events, and the team’s times have been somewhat lacking as a result.

But the time to get rid of preseason jitters is over.

“I think we’ve pretty much established where everyone is going to compete,” Nanista said. “Most of our athletes are fairly versatile, so we’re going to be able to switch them around from meet to meet. But, for the most part, we are going to put people in the event that they’re strongest at and let them focus a little bit more on their events.

“As we get further into the season, they’ll continue to improve their times.”