Runner’s high: the athletes who use marijuana to improve their training

[Jesus Malverde]

Avery Collins speaks with the snow-bro drawl typical of many young Coloradans.

With his bloodshot, blue eyes peeking out from under blond curls and a low-slung hat, he could easily fit in with the stoners at a 4/20 festival.

“For me, it’s a spiritual happening,” he said recently. “Everything is perfect, everything is pure bliss.”

But Collins isn’t talking about the effects of marijuana. He’s talking about the runner’s high. The 25-year-old ultramarathoner is a marijuana user, just not the stereotypical couch-locked stoner living on junk food and video games. In the last three years, he’s completed 30 ultramarathons – five of which were a hundred miles each – and a 200-mile race through the Rocky Mountains, which he won with a time of 65 hours.

Avery says that eating cannabis edibles before and during a run, instead of slowing him down, as one might think, actually enhances the experience.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/02/marijuana-athlete-running-performance-enhancing-drug

[immoderate]

1. Told ya!

--imm