Going the Distance is a story of heroics and unstoppable spirit, an entertaining and educational portrayal of African American heroes Jesse Owens and Wilma Rudolph. This January production was the second in the series performed by the Smithsonian Discovery Theater and arranged and sponsored by the Conservancy at two DCPS schools (Takoma Educational Center and Shepherd ES).  Through song, dance and narrative, the two great athletes race to tell their stories of rising from childhood illness and infirmity, poverty, and prejudice to the greatest height in athletics: the Olympic Gold Medal!  Jesse Owens, the son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave,  became the first American track & field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad, the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany.  Hitler believed that the Games would prove that the German "Aryan" people were the dominant race.  Jesse proved otherwise.  Wilma Rudolph was born with polio that left her crippled and unable to attend school.  Through exercise and strong determination, she begin to walk more normally at age 12, and then in high school and college set new national track records.  Her ultimate accomplishment came in 1960 at the Olympic Games in Rome where she won three gold medals for the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay.