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

“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.”