“Ain’t No Tellin’ What A Young Black Man Can Do!”

Many years ago I was working at Pepperdine University, when the campus was on Vermont avenue down in the inner city. And at lunch times, I’d run on the track. My distance was five miles, but it took me time to work up to it. Not because of the physical stress, but because, at about the three mile point, I hit a special level of fatigue, and the voices started in my head:

You’re going to die!

You’re hurting yourself!

You can’t do this!