Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii -- When Paul Fracolli was ten years old, he wanted to see how long it would take him to run a mile. He strapped on his sneakers, asked his mom to follow him in the family car, and hit the road. When he raced a mile, she stopped the timer and beeped the horn.
Fast forward to April 15, 2016, on the Earhart Track at JBPHH, where Fracolli, a 1st Lt. and pilot in the 19th Fighter Squadron, just beat the Hickam physical training test run time record of 8:22 in just 7:55- and somehow, he did it without any stress.
“The test proctor mentioned the record when we were about to start running,” Fracolli said. “So I figured, well, okay, I think I can beat that, so I might as well try.”
The running portion of the test came after Fracolli maxed out the pushups with 69 repetitions and the sit-ups with 70 repetitions, rounding out his assessment score to a perfect 100. And this was not his first record-breaking run- Fracolli also beat the high score at Laughlin Air Force Base with a 7:40 mile and a half in 2012.
“Fracolli was just like any other member testing- quiet and focused,” said Tech. Sgt. Jarret Espiritu, Fitness Assessment Cell non-commissioned officer in charge. “My supervisor was out there with me that day and we saw him gliding towards the finish line. You know a runner when you see one. It comes natural to them. He was one of them.”
However, Fracolli hasn’t always been a runner. Focused on other sports like swimming and water polo, he only started running three or four times a week to supplement his workouts as a student and Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps cadet at the University of California- Los Angeles.
“That’s when I realized I was actually sort of into it,” he said. “It wasn’t my biggest passion, but I didn’t mind throwing on some music and exploring Bel Air or trying to beat my times for my routes through LA.”
Once running became an activity he did for fun, Fracolli challenged himself with running goals. A junior in college, he trained for a marathon, running up to 60 miles per week, even through the aches and pains.
“It's easy for me to look back on that whole experience through a happy cloud, because it was awesome to have a goal that felt way out of my league,” he said. “But in reality, training for the marathon was very consuming.”
Perhaps it is this persistence that helped Fracolli get his name on the Wall of Fame, a program the Hickam Fitness Assessment Cell began in April to highlight those Airmen who exceed the standards.
“More and more members are getting faster and receiving 100s on their physical fitness test,” said Espiritu. “We believe that they should be recognized for their efforts. Not very often do the records get broken.”
When Fracolli was a ten-year-old boy impressed with his own competitive sub-six minute mile, his dad told him something that stuck with him through the years.
“He told me, ‘you can’t measure your success in comparison to other people, you have to measure it in comparison to yourself,’” Fracolli recalls. “He probably doesn’t remember telling me that, but I think that it helped motivate me to work for things that I care about, regardless of the amount of natural skill, or lack thereof, that I have for them.”
Fracolli, who believes that records are made to be broken, stresses the importance of other Airmen making goals and sticking to them. Then maybe, just maybe, his new record at Hickam will be broken.