The Long Run Back

The sport of track and field gave me everything before I even knew what everything meant.

It gave me discipline when I was too young to understand why I needed it. It gave me teammates who became brothers and sisters for life, coaches who became mentors, and a standard that has followed me across every chapter of my life. To this day, I still receive love and support from teammates I ran with in junior high, high school, college, and beyond. That bond does not expire. It only deepens.

Coach Ronald Jenkins and Coach Dennis Chestnut built the Eastern Branch Striders Track and Field Club together from the ground up to give Washington, D.C. public school athletes somewhere to go and something to chase during the summer. They organized practices, created competition, and opened a door that the public school system had left closed. We did whatever we had to do to make it happen. We washed cars, sold candy, and hustled every way we knew how to cover track fees, van rentals, gas, and hotel rooms so we could travel to AAU meets in San Antonio, Texas, Tallahassee, Florida, Athens, Georgia, and Towson, Maryland. Nobody handed us anything. We earned every trip. We competed against the best and fastest kids in the nation, and we held our own, because Coach Jenkins and Coach Chestnut believed we could before we believed it ourselves. The Washington Post covered it. We were that serious.

Coach Jenkins also served as my head coach at Wilson High School, where he led us to an undefeated DCIAA season and was named Girls Coach of the Year by the Washington Post, not once but twice. Under his leadership, we won the boys cross country championships my junior and senior year. He is the kind of coach who does not just teach you how to run. He teaches you how to compete, how to carry yourself, and how to think like someone who belongs at the front of any field he enters.

He is not my coach today, but he has never stopped being a coach. After I post my races on social media, he watches and responds with the same sharp eye he had when I was running for Wilson. I appreciate his perspective and feedback as much now as I did when I was in high school. That kind of investment in a former athlete is rare, and it is not lost on me.

Last year I competed at the USATF Masters Championships and finished 5th in the finals of the 1500 meters. After the race, Coach Jenkins told me, "Congratulations Ern, you were only 2.66 seconds from getting on the podium. It looks like you need to work on speed work." Direct. Accurate. Exactly what a coach is supposed to say. The fact that he was still in coaching mode after being retired for a decade says everything about the kind of men who poured into me.

I carried both of them with me.

When I look at Black Men Run Atlanta, when I stand on that track at Bill Badgett Stadium on a Wednesday night and watch Masters runners push through workouts they were told they were too old to attempt, I see what Coach Jenkins and Coach Chestnut saw in us. I see potential that has been overlooked. I see men who need structure, accountability, and someone who believes in them more than the health statistics say they should be believed in.

Because the statistics are alarming. Heart disease is the number one cause of death for African American males. Black men over 20 are nearly twice as likely to die from cardiovascular disease as their counterparts. These are not abstract numbers. They are fathers, brothers, uncles, and friends. They are the men standing next to me on that track who have no idea how close they are to a crisis they could prevent.

That is why on March 11, 2026, I launched the BMR Masters Track Program. And that is why I created Know Your Numbers, a health literacy initiative developed in partnership with Black physicians who see these disparities every day in their patients, their communities, and their own families. We are not just running. We are intervening. Every mile is an act of resistance against a health crisis that has gone unaddressed for too long.

I have been funding this work out of my own pocket because I believe in it that deeply. But now I am taking a page from Coach Jenkins and Coach Chestnut. They did not let a lack of resources stop them from building something that changed lives. They found a way. They raised the funds, built the team, and took those kids places they had never been, because somebody had to.

That is exactly what Longevity and Performance Strategies, L.A.P.S. LLC, is built to do. To fund, sustain, and scale a program that gives Black men the tools, the training, and the community they need to live longer, healthier, more powerful lives.

Coach Jenkins told me I needed speed work.

He was right. We are picking it up now.

See you on the oval.

Coach Coop

Ernest Cooper III

Founder, L.A.P.S. LLC

Head Coach, BMR Masters Track Program

RRCA Certified Running Coach