Jacob Barker
Self-built road running legend, from 5 to 50K.
Jacob has been a Noeltra athlete since December 2022, coming from the small town of Drakes Branch, VA. Like his coach, Jacob is an alumnus of Longwood University; where he majored in Kinesiology and served as Kinesiology Student Tutor and President of the Association of Medical and Professional Kinesiology during his time as a student. Jacob is beginning DPT school at VCU this year!
Prior to joining Team Noelta, Jacob competed in four years of cross country and track & field at Randolph-Henry High School. After graduating high school, Jacob began training on his own, completing four Marathons between November 2019 and November 2022, including his first Boston qualifier, the One City Marathon in Newport News, VA, in March 2022.
While Jacob has (fortunately) never struggled with any major injuries during his time as a runner, he found his fitness beginning to plateau after his Boston qualifier of 2:50:21, running a 3:09:44 at the 2022 New York City Marathon and seeing minimal personal record improvements in distances below the Marathon throughout the entirety of 2022.Â
Due to this challenge, Jacob consulted Noel in December 2022, where, together, they made a drastic shift in Jacob's training approach, emphasizing recovery, specificity, and the introduction of resistance training. With these changes, Jacob quickly saw improvements in his fitness, running a 2:42:26, an eight-minute personal record, at the 2023 Boston Marathon and knocking his 5K PR down from 17:23 to 16:56 in less than six months. Jacob looks forward to many stark improvements in fitness and stellar performances ahead as a part of Team Noeltra.