Brownsville runner turns weight loss measure to lifelong love
Dec. 6—Polo Palacios has made the equivalent of three trips around the globe in a 45-year running career that started as a tactic to defeat dangerous weight gain and became a source of lifelong enjoyment.
A 1967 Brownsville High School graduate, Palacios was discharged from the U.S. Army in 1971 after being drafted in 1969 for the Vietnam War but instead served two years in Germany.
Injuring his back in the process, Palacios was discharged with a disability. Back home he found himself gaining weight.
"I was weighing about what I am right now, which is 170, and from 1971 to about 1975 I went to 250," Palacios said on a recent morning at his Brownsville home. "I was just enjoying life. I was single, and I had bought myself a 1965 GTO when I got out of the service. ...I was in tremendous shape when I was in the service, but then I would look at my stomach touching the steering wheel, and I said, 'Hey, you've got to do something about yourself.'"
He hit upon running, really just walking and jogging a little at first, but he embraced the challenge.
"Actually I started in September 1978. I started jogging and that's when I was weighing 250 pounds. I was so big I used to wear a size 40-42 pair of pants. I'm down to a 32 now," he said.
Palacios had done the math to calculate his total miles run but wasn't aware they totaled three trips around the earth at the equator.
He said from 1982 to 2002, a 30-years span, he had covered 58,200 miles by running 6 miles a day six days a week. Then from 2002 to the present, another 20 years, he cut down to 5 miles a day the same six days a week for 19,000 miles and bringing the total to about 77,000 miles.
The earth's circumference at the equator is 24,901 miles.
"So from barely jogging one mile, I went to 3 miles a day in a month," he said. "Walk and jog. Walk and jog. I would walk maybe a mile and a half, and I would jog a little bit so I would do 3 miles for a month, month and a half, and then from September to December I got up to 5 miles," he said.
"Slow, I mean I was not chasing any rabbits, ... and then in January 1979 up to July, I got up to 5 miles and then in July I went up to 6 miles, slowly, slowly."
Palacios said his first competitive run was the 1979 or 1980 Burger Chef Run, named for the restaurant that sat where the McDonald's on the Expressway 77-83 frontage now sits at the end of Palm Boulevard. He said he came in second in his age category, but a little later on.
"In 1981 was when I started getting serious about it," he said, listing a best half marathon time of 1:28. "That's under 7 minutes a mile ... I did that when I was about 33 years old. My friend who's 38 now did it in 1:35."
"I've also done 10 miles. I've done it in I would say, if I can remember correctly, in about an hour and 10 minutes. And in 1992 I did the (Port Isabel) Causeway Run, 6.1 miles, in 36:45."
Palacios said he's also run in the Beach to Bay in Corpus Christi, a six-man marathon relay, competing in 1992, 1997, 2014-17, 2021 and May 2022, the last race he's run.
"I've been blessed. I get irritable when I don't run. Sometimes I start at 6 o'clock in the morning," he said. He still runs six days a week.
Palacios has stayed active otherwise, graduating with a degree in education in 1979 and teaching at Garden Park Elementary for 14 years, Stell Middle School for 10 and Vermillion Elementary for seven.
Today, he regards himself as more or less retired, although he officially retired from the Brownsville Independent School District 14 years ago. His wife Gloria is also retired but still substitutes, he said.
He is a CASA volunteer, the Court Appointed Special Advocates who look out for the interests of abused and neglected children.
He's active in two Brownsville-area veterans organizations, plays golf and stays busy keeping up with a network of friends and neighbors that includes veterans, former teachers and high school-era friends.
He said he won't be able to participate in the inaugural Brownsville Chief of Police Marathon and Half Marathon scheduled for Dec. 11, saying he's not in shape to do so anyway.
He and his wife are traveling to Dallas to see their two granddaughters perform in a recital.
