College student runs across Iowa for Spring Break

GRANDVIEW, Iowa (KWQC) - Most college students spend their Spring Breaks somewhere warm, or maybe they go back home to spend quality time with mom and dad. However, one University of Northern Iowa student decided to spend his spring attempting to break a record.

Paul Noble embarked on a run across Iowa, starting in Muscatine on Sunday morning.

“Last year I had my eye on [running across the state] and I thought it’d be fun to go after it,” Paul said.

The UNI sophomore will run on Iowa State Highway 92 for most of his journey. The fastest known time to run across Iowa — four days, 15 hours, 32 minutes and 15 seconds — is held by Taylor Ross who join Paul on Monday to help his pace.

Paul said it’s great to have Ross’ support along the way.

“It’s awesome, he called me up last night wished me good luck,” Paul said. It’s really helpful for sure.”

It’s not just Ross helping out, Paul picked up a sponsorship — Charolette’s Kitchen in Johnston, owned by his cousin.

Meanwhile, Paul’s mom, dad and girlfriend, drove alongside him with food and water for breaks. They caught up to him in Grandview a little after 8 a.m.

“Paul’s always set high goals, high loft goals,” Tracy Noble, Paul’s mom said. “We never know what he’s going to do, we just wanted to be here because he needed some help along the way.”

Paul’s girlfriend said a cross-state run wasn’t how she envisioned spending her spring break.

“It’s always something with him,” Sam Parr said. “When he told me about it initially, I was like ‘alright, that makes sense.’”

It took Paul a couple of years of training, he ran a few ultra-marathons leading up to this point.

Paul’s dad said it’s great to see him thrive in the running community.

“It’s a lot of fun. He’s got a lot of support,” Tom Noble said. “It’s definitely worth it to watch your child shoot for a goal and be able to hopefully achieve it.”

If everything goes to plan Paul should finish his run on Wednesday around 9 p.m.

By the sound of it, Paul has a good playlist lined up to get to him through his run.

“I was bumping some T-swift this morning,” Paul said. “Some podcasts – ‘Washed Up Walk-ons.’”

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