Jennifer Rubel comes from a family of athletes and chose distance running at the age of seven.
In the time it will take you to thumb through this issue of The Signal, Jennifer Rubel could probably run an entire 5k – her personal best in the event is 18 minutes and two seconds.
Anyway, Rubel is probably running somewhere at this very moment. She has to be, since she runs 60 miles a week during the cross country season and adds another ten to that during her summer vacation.
“There are days when you get out there and you’ve come off a really hard week of training and your legs just aren’t feeling it,” Rubel said. “Then there’s days when you get out there and you just feel like your floating.”
The Junior Film major said she took up distance running at the age of seven and was inspired by both of her parents. Her father swam competitively at Georgia Tech.
Rubel began to think about running at the college level in the tenth grade after several of her high school teammates went off to college and returned with stories of how great being a college athlete was.
After speaking with her high school coach, Rubel decided she wanted to run in college and pursue a degree in Film. Georgia State was the only college she applied to.
Rubel spent her freshmen year at Georgia State running near the back of the team and didn’t get to travel. She even had to red-shirt her freshman track season due to an injury.
She made major strides her sophomore year and consistently ran at the back of the travel team. That Spring she had a good track season running the 10k and rode that momentum into her summer training sessions.
This season, Rubel has been one of the top runners for Georgia State and has helped the team become one of the more competitive units in the Sun Belt Conference.
Running in a team environment is something that Rubel is fond of and seems to have a very fine understanding of what that responsibility entails.
“If you let those couple pass you, then you’re going to hurt the team,” she said. “So you have to run for other people and not just yourself.”
But don’t think that Rubel doesn’t think of herself from time to time.
She said she allows herself to eat ice cream once a month, maybe. And she even gave herself one very unique birthday present last year—a 20-mile run on her 20th.
Rubel is a reticent person, which nicely matches her own running style.
“I don’t have any fast twitch muscles, so sprinting out isn’t really an option for me,” she said. “So I just take it out the first mile and the pickoff people the last two miles.”
The silent, racing assassin plans on picking people off in marathons and possibly Olympics trials after her time is up at Georgia State.
And when asked if she will always run long distances she answered all great distance runners would.
“The farther, the better,” she said.
