Will weed hurt my running performance?

Long term yes. It will seem like it won't at first, if use is only about once per week. After a few years if still smoking use will typically have had a slowing effect. Maybe not in all individuals, but the longer they smoke the slower they will be, based on a loss of lung function.

If you run the half marathon this may not be apparent. That race is overwhelmingly aerobic. Maybe even run at below lung capacity for most runners. In a race that requires a lot of anaerobic energy, 400m to mile the slowdown will be most dramatic.

It's important for runners in these events to have a high "red line", maximal oxygen uptake to be able to run fast without going into energy debt. This would also apply almost as much to the 5k.

Hitmonlee wrote:

Long term yes. It will seem like it won't at first, if use is only about once per week. After a few years if still smoking use will typically have had a slowing effect. Maybe not in all individuals, but the longer they smoke the slower they will be, based on a loss of lung function.

If you run the half marathon this may not be apparent. That race is overwhelmingly aerobic. Maybe even run at below lung capacity for most runners. In a race that requires a lot of anaerobic energy, 400m to mile the slowdown will be most dramatic.

It's important for runners in these events to have a high "red line", maximal oxygen uptake to be able to run fast without going into energy debt. This would also apply almost as much to the 5k.

I guess I was exploring marijuana in a general sense. I'm not sure about the long-term effects on running performance though. I personally don't feel any difference, but I know substances affect different people in different ways. My running coach was a stud in high school, college, and beyond, and has always maintained a 3-4 cigarette / day habit. Same goes for all a lot his buddies from that era. There was also an article that a read a while back which stated the adverse effects of marijuana on athletic performance are far less than that of cigarettes.

I think it all depends on the place running / sport has in your life. If you're trying to really "get after it," then you should probably stay away from anything that may harm your performance, including marijuana, but if you're taking a more casual approach to athletics, then you should be OK with a little balance in your life.

A quite high brow angle coming from someone who likely just started going to doctors appointments on their own. This reads a bit like a weed recommendation written in the prose of a college entrance essay or SAT-type piece.

keep living your life kid and enjoy the journey. just giving you a little flack

d2 runner, should i?!? wrote:

I'm on a d2 track and cross country team and my roomates and some of my friends are always smoking weed. They want me to try it and quite honestly i'm curious but what are the effects on distance runners? I'm not afraid that my drive to run will slow down but it will be detrimental to my body and performance in the long run?

If you're looking for an excuse to try it, you'll easily find one online. You can pretty much find anything on the Internet that says a substance is harmless.

Here's the science: THC triggers your body to produce an excess of the protein Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG). The protein binds to your testosterone, making it unusable. So marijuana will hurt your testosterone levels, 100%.

Bump. Ate a weed cookie last night. WORST NIGHT OF MY LIFE. I did way too much for first time. Started laughing non stop for first 5 minutes. Then got very nausois and light headed. Major headache, seeing shapes, motion sickness, heart beating, head beating fast, and time going VERY slow. Felt like I was dead, kept asking friends if "this is normal" or "I just wanna live another day". Woke up in night to use bathroom and i pissed for close to 5 minutes constant. Went back downstairs and got lost going back to my couch was hobbling around to get back. Woke up again and puked a few times. Then finally fell a sleep for a few hours, woke up about an hour ago but only light headed and nausois. I kept asking my friends "how they like this stuff" or "to touch me to know I'm alive". I was saying my good byes to people I know in my head. AWFUL experience. Pot heads, is this normal?

Simple logic suggests that if weed impairs judgement then anecdotes from weed users might not be reliable.

Also keep in mind that weed is on the banned substance list. You'll likely never get caught but you are technically cheating.

Edibles can be brutal when you overdo them, but I call BS on the "1st 5 minutes" kick in as they creep and typically take an hour or so before onset.

Assuming you're not just having some fun trolling the boards, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you're worthless today, missing the Sunday long run and in the end, made a decision that will hinder performance, albeit slightly.

My last 2 cents on this topic: MJ is fine in moderation off season and I would have to concur with other posters, no more harmful or perhaps less harmful than booze. MJ does not, under any circumstances, enhance running performance and in the end, my use left me wondering if I would've had a better shot @ cracking 4 or going sub 14 without using. Probably not, but I will never know.

It's normal for noobs. I had a similar experience the first time I had a pot brownie. Edibles are probably the worst way to introduce yourself to marijuana. You have no idea how potent they are or what a good dose is for you. Imagine a first-time alcohol drinker taking 12 shots of whiskey right off the bat; that's basically what you did. If you ever have the desire to try again and get it right, just take a hit or two off a joint. You'll get high, but you'll stay in the stratosphere instead of jettisoning all the way out to Mars.

I ran Houston last Sunday. I started in corral C and it took me 17 minutes to cross the start line. about 4 miles into the race, I passes a guy wearing NORML ( National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) shirt. I looked at his bib as I passed him. It was a half marathon bib with a B corral start. I chuckled and said out loud, " If you weren't smoking dope, you be running the full." he probably wouldn't be so delusional that he started in B corral, too.

Go Figure wrote:

I ran Houston last Sunday. I started in corral C and it took me 17 minutes to cross the start line. about 4 miles into the race, I passes a guy wearing NORML ( National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) shirt. I looked at his bib as I passed him. It was a half marathon bib with a B corral start. I chuckled and said out loud, " If you weren't smoking dope, you be running the full." he probably wouldn't be so delusional that he started in B corral, too.

Thanks for letting us know that you're slow AND a douche bag.

I love how drug users are justifying their habit and think they have control of it. Posts like the one below sound like an alcoholic to me.

Macdaddy wrote:

Lol so many party poopers in this thread.

Obviously, don't go smoking everyday but smoking once a week or so will not do ANYTHING. It's not a poison. It's not a cigarette. It's freaking pot.

My well-respected d3 coach caught me once and said this:

"I strongly believe that there is a level of destruction to everything we put into our body. In terms of recreational things, I'd list them like this (worst to best for you):

1) hard alcohol

2) beer

3) soda

4) pot"

Everything in moderation my friend.

One might think so. Clearly alcohol does far more damage to your body than weed. However, as far as running, I always found I could race with a hangover (if it was not too brutal) without it slowing me down, I felt like crap but my performance was not harmed. After a night of weed smoking however, I would feel just fine -- but races were always slow. Up to nearly a minute slow in a 10k. I think the weed drains us of some of the aggression needed to race well.

I meant the first five minutes after it kicked in. Took about 40 minutes to kick in.

Musical Youth wrote:

My friend tried it the night before a meet last season. He said he felt a little hang over in the morning but his muscles felt relaxed. He did his normal warm up but did it shorter than usual because his legs felt loose and his lungs were relaxed. His hang over wasn't as strong after his warm up. When his race started he went out in 73, then 2:26, then 3:25! He felt great until the last 200 but died out but still finished in 4:46! His first time under 5!!! He was happy but said it felt like there was still some smoke in his lungs and was coughing a lot when he finished. He thinks he could have gone under 4:40 without the smoking.

73 73 59 81. Nice try.

i chose D2 wrote:

Musical Youth wrote:

My friend tried it the night before a meet last season. He said he felt a little hang over in the morning but his muscles felt relaxed. He did his normal warm up but did it shorter than usual because his legs felt loose and his lungs were relaxed. His hang over wasn't as strong after his warm up. When his race started he went out in 73, then 2:26, then 3:25! He felt great until the last 200 but died out but still finished in 4:46! His first time under 5!!! He was happy but said it felt like there was still some smoke in his lungs and was coughing a lot when he finished. He thinks he could have gone under 4:40 without the smoking.

73 73 59 81. Nice try.

He lost me when he spoke of his friend having a hang over from pot.

d2 runner, should i?!? wrote:

I'm on a d2 track and cross country team and my roomates and some of my friends are always smoking weed. They want me to try it and quite honestly i'm curious but what are the effects on distance runners? I'm not afraid that my drive to run will slow down but it will be detrimental to my body and performance in the long run?

I myself have done loads of research and have had countless first hand experiences here. When you smoke weed, the smoke enters your lungs and coats the interior surface of your lungs wth a very, very thin layer of tar (yes, weed smoke deposits tar into your lungs). However, I find that this tar is mostly cleared out after a hard effort or 2. That hard effort, whether its a tempo or set of 200s, is going to suck.

Call me crazy, but weed makes running a whole lot easier sometimes. Like another poster said earlier, weed is an anti-inflammatory. The day after I smoke, I can go crank out 13 miles like its nothing because my legs feel phenomenal. However, the feeling is not the same if I'm doing 200s-400s because then I am out of breath and unable to catch my breath by the next interval.

Basically, there are no long term effects, I'd say less than a week if you run everyday. Short term, it will hurt your ability to breath in enough oxygen on hard efforts, but for long runs/easy runs your legs will feel phenomenal. My suggestion would be to vaporize your weed with a decent vape, you can get that anti-inflammatory without the tar. If you can't get one of those, I'd say bake some brownies and look up the process on youtube cause its not as simple as you think. Note that your legs will not be feeling better if you go with brownies because the THC is not absorbed in the lungs.

Also, there's no such thing as a "weed hangover"-- I'm guessing thats placebo or something because I hear people talk about it but that really isn't how weed works...

See....this is a very interesting post for me. I quite frequently wondered this in college about six years ago when I first started to look into pot.

I slowly got into it, and by the time I was a senior in college, I was using daily, sometimes even before class. I was also putting in less than 40 miles a week, because I couldn't run a lot of mileage. Might have been borderline anemic. I red-shirted and jumped into 800s and 1500s. I remember one time I smoked a joint a few hours before a 1500m race and ran a 4:06 (4:04 is my PR). I had not been training seriously and was taking an extra class my final semester, and my focus was on enjoying my last few months at my school. This particular semester, was the only time in my academic career that I earned a 4.0.

I graduated cumlaude. I have a vaporizer (Da Buddah V) that I have used pretty much daily for the last four years, I smoke on occasion. I've built up a tolerance to it for sure, but I enjoy it. I have a great job, and I'm putting in anywhere from 40-80 miles in a week running. I enjoy running while high. I ran 5:39 pace for a half marathon about 4 years ago after having an edible.

The point is pot is less harmful to you than most things. My recommendations are:

If you're concerned about your health, take my advice.

-Don't dab (wax/oil) probably most definitely not good for your lungs

-Hesitate about blunts. They're wrapped in tobacco (green/brown) and that is a known carcinogenic (cancer causing). I took two hits from a blunt a week ago, to celebrate MLK J R you know? and before that it may have been two years since I had smoked a blunt. The next day I had a killer speed workout.

-Don't ever pass up a joint.

-Bong hits burn your lungs. even filtered through water. I'd rather smoke out of a piece or a water pipe. Bongs burn.

-Edibles are strong af. Once it's in your system, there is no going back. You have to ride the wave out. You won't die though.

I've been using off and on since the age of 19, and now I use it on the daily I would say. I would call myself a high functioning, super fit pot head. I don't just run. But running is a true passion of mine, and if pot was detrimental to performance I wouldn't do it. The anxiety I felt while racing in high school is way worse than the DGAF mode I get into when jumping in random 5k's, all comers meets and even half marathons after a chill sesh earlier or perhaps the night before. I always place in the top 1% of races.

The worst things that have happened to me from pot:

-Ate an entire edible and threw up on myself

-I've probably missed out on picking up girls because I'm high and enjoying life too much. There is, however, nothing like smoking a joint with a chick and then going to town on her, like them rabbits do.

-Ate too much of an edible another time because I didn't learn my lesson the first time

-Dabbed and drove. Some of these dispensaries offer free dabs on purchase. I don't condone driving after smoking wax/oil or eating edibles. I had a panic attack on the fwy about 15 minutes after I dabbed. Will never do again.

Bottom line is, do your research. Pot isn't bad for you. Don't ever try the party drugs though. I will continue to use probably for the rest of my life. I'll probably take breaks here and there, but hey, I don't have children yet. I'll also continue to be a runner and a competitor, and I hope to be able to on a whim, bust out a sub 4:40 mile into my 50's, like I can do now at the age of 26. I'm currently in like, 4:25 shape and just had two really solid speed workouts in the last few days. If it works for me, it could work for you.

No Excuses EVER wrote:

Despite what you may have heard, it is a dangerous substance when used for recreation. (There is substantial evidence it helps with pain where the medicinal use outweighs side affects). But if it wins votes then it must be good, right?

DON'T DO IT, ESPECIALLY IF YOU INTEND TO SMOKE IT. Rise above peer pressure. As a runner your body is sacred if you intend to be a competitor not a slacker loser.

I think I got cancer just reading this.

This thread is pure gold, keep it up guys!