After Jeff Sperber crosses the finish line of a 50-mile ultramarathon, he has a specific post-race routine. Like many runners, first he stretches. Then he eats some protein. About an hour later, though, he deviates from the ordinary program by inhaling a few puffs of marijuana from a handheld vaporizer.

“When you’ve been running for that long, you’ve got swelling muscles and aching joints, and you’re tired,” says the 42-year-old Los Angeles resident, a runner since college who has been doing long races since 2007. “You can take an Advil, which will help the swelling and inflammation, but it’s also very taxing on your liver.”

Sperber is part of a growing number of runners who are coming out of the proverbial closet as marijuana smokers or ingesters of THC (marijuana’s active component) through other means, usually edibles, tinctures or topical ointments. Groups such as Run on Grass, in Denver, Colorado, and Team Hope through Cannabis, in Texas, hope to change attitudes about the typical pot smoker and otherwise inspire conversation about marijuana.

Sperber has had two hip surgeries and a hernia surgery, and he’s currently dealing with stage four arthritis in a toe. Though he has a prescription for pain medication to address his post-run issues, he prefers to not use it whenever possible. “I can’t do that stuff and function as a normal human being,” says Sperber, who also has a legal prescription for medical marijuana. “As a weed smoker, I can function.”

His course of treatment might be unorthodox, but it’s not necessarily misguided.

“Certain chemicals within marijuana have anti-inflammatory effects,” says Gregory Gerdeman, an assistant professor of biology at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and contributing author to . “The most obvious potential benefit to an athlete is controlling inflammation and some of the aches and pains that relate to injury. If you lower inflammation, you will raise the pain threshold.”

Cannabis Concerns

Though 23 states have legalized medical marijuana, and four states and the District of Columbia permit pot for recreational use, it is still largely an illegal drug. Additionally, it remains on the NCAA’s and IAAF’s banned substances list.

There are more than legal concerns for runners. Smoking marijuana can create health issues that can affect performance.

“There are cardiovascular effects, like increasing heart rate,” says Gerdeman. “These may be minimal in young athletes or those with tolerance, but should be considered seriously by anyone at risk for coronary heart disease. Plus, there have been some studies that [suggest] it influences blood flow to the brain, which can influence the risk of stroke.”

Additionally, chronic smoking is related to pulmonary irritation and gives rise to risk factors associated with various pulmonary problems. Gerdeman points out that many marijuana users try to sidestep the latter effects.

“People who are athletic are most probably eating THC or vaporizing marijuana, which means the pulmonary risks are lessened or absent in those situations,” he says. “We have come to a time when burning pot is almost passé.”

Former professional runner Chris Barnicle is familiar with this tactic. He regularly ate marijuana-infused foods during non-running hours while a 5K/10K athlete at the University of Arkansas and University of New Mexico, and later when he was sponsored by Asics and New Balance.

He didn’t use edibles just for fun. As a freshman in college, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, which caused drastic gastrointestinal distress, created intense abdominal pain, affected his ability to sleep, and wreaked havoc on his appetite. Rather than go on prescription medication, he began eating crackers laden with marijuana-infused peanut butter.

“The digestive issues immediately disappeared, and I felt like I was recovering a lot better internally,” he says. “The stress I had with school, relationships and running seemed to wither away a little bit, too.”

There were drawbacks. “I felt a little bit of a drowsiness – like a slight hangover – the next day,” Barnicle says. “In the mornings, I would feel a little loopy and out of it. I felt like I needed a little coffee.”

Though he was drug tested at several points in his career, he never tested positive for marijuana use. A tibia injury this year has sidelined the 27-year-old from running professionally. Now he and three former classmates and fellow runners from the University of Arkansas, Micky Corbin, Spencer Grimes, and Daniel Lacava, are working on launching Los Angeles-based Zip Organics, a marijuana edibles company.

Currently, they have developed two bars, sweet potato date, and pumpkin cherry. Each includes 25 milligrams of THC per serving, as well as caffeine. The marijuana-laced energy bars aren’t available commercially yet, but Barnicle and his partners hope to get them stocked in Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries soon.

The bars are designed to be eaten before runs. Barnicle eats half a bar about an hour before lacing up, and swears by them. “I’m much more in tune with my body after I’ve had one,” he says. “I feel like I have more of a connection, so I can concentrate on my running form.”

Barnicle might be tapping into a phenomenon that neuroscientists have been studying for years: runner’s high.

“When you have runner’s high, you have feelings very similar to those you would feel if you were smoking marijuana: sedation, analgesia, mild happiness, the loss of the sensation of time and a loss of worries,” says Arne Dietrich, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the American University of Beirut, who has been studying altered states of consciousness for 15 years.

According to Dietrich, runner’s high occurs during sustained, steady physical activity when the prefrontal cortex of the brain down regulates.

“Studies show there’s a performance enhancement when this happens,” he says. “The system in the brain that runs you or plays tennis or does anything else in this flow state is simple, but efficient. The system in the prefrontal cortex is complex, but that complexity also means that it’s slow. When that system is down regulated, it enhances the other system, which is built for speed and efficiency.”

THC has a comparable effect. “The neurotransmitter system that marijuana hijacks is the cannabinoid system,” says Dietrich. “The CB1 and CB2 receptors – the main target of THC – also down regulate frontal cortex functions, so the effect on the brain is similar, though the method is different.”

However, Dietrich doesn’t recommend ingesting THC before a run in the hope of attaining a runner’s high, because marijuana is a sedative.

“It has negative effects on motor performance,” he says. “There is not much data to support this, but circumstantial, indirect evidence supports this. When you smoke marijuana, you become sluggish and lazy, so it cannot be positively correlated with performance on a task that requires motion.”

Sperber refuses to use marijuana before a run, though sometimes he will vaporize a little the night before a race to help him sleep and deal with stress. “It affects your performance,” he says. “Physiologically, I’m concentrating on multiple things: cadence, rotation, breathing, heart rate. I want to be totally in touch with myself.”

Growing Interest

Regardless of when or how runners are using marijuana, the topic is becoming more openly discussed in the running community. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on the subject. In 2010, Georgia Edson founded Run on Grass in Denver, Colorado, where it’s legal to recreationally use marijuana.

The open group, which has close to 600 followers on Facebook, is a loose collective of runners who train and compete in distance events together and educate the public about marijuana. Members wear T-shirts emblazoned with the group’s logo, which includes a marijuana leaf. The logo is intended to surprise people out on the course and invite comment.

“What usually happens is someone laughs and says, ‘I like your shirt,’” says the 45-year-old longtime recreational runner, who uses a cannabis-infused topical cream to treat bursitis in her hip. “I tell them that I’m running to help people learn more about the benefits of cannabis and debunk some of the myths. It starts amazing conversations. And when you’re running a half marathon, there is a lot of time to talk.”

Team Hope through Cannabis, a subgroup of the Texas chapter of NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), has more than 500 fans on Facebook. They've been active since mid-2012 and ran their most recent event on Memorial Day of last year. The group hopes people who see them running will reappraise their thoughts on the typical pot smoker, while the runners also raise awareness about marijuana reform and legalization.

The Marijuana Marathon Man, who has more than 5,000 Twitter followers, has a similar goal: Running to raise support and awareness for medicinal marijuana treatment, research, and legalization. He competes in marathons wearing his marijuana logo T-shirt and hopes to inspire questions and conversations, much like Run On Grass participants.

Sperber knows from his own conversations there still are lots of negative conceptions about marijuana in the running community—and he agrees with some of them.

“The stereotype is true,” he says. “I’ve never been that guy. My running friends call me the fastest stoner they know.”

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