Denver journalist publishes guide to cannabis and running

By J. Byron

In 2015, as Denver investigative journalist Josiah Hesse was about to run the Colfax Marathon, he noticed many runners were using cannabis products Colorado had legalized a year earlier, as was he.

Was this an anomaly? How widespread was mixing these substances with high-intensity exercise?

This planted a seed that has bloomed into Hesse’s new book, “Runner’s High: How a Movement of Cannabis-Fueled Athletes Is Changing the Science of Sports.”

Hesse set out to debunk the stereotype of the lazy stoner, and to research the aforementioned link between cannabis and pushing the physical limits of one’s body.

This took him to Boulder (try not to look surprised), where the University of Colorado is studying the subject. Further adventures lead to various mountain towns, Denver parks, and even the Tattered Cover Book Store.

A mix of memoir, history and advocacy, “Runner’s High” is at its best when Hesse does serious journalism. Sections about an Iraq veteran with PTSD and a wheelchair athlete who lost his legs in a drunken accident are compelling. And of course the American history of marijuana prohibition is interesting, if not inescapably inconsistent. In the advocacy sections, Hesse makes the case that such unpredictable policies continue to this day. For example, why are so many sports organizations punitive toward marijuana but not other, ostensibly more harmful substances?

J. Byron is a new contributor to Thirst Colorado. Send us suggestions for Colorado authors’ books to be reviewed.

Where “Runner’s High” tends to falter, though, is with Hesse’s navel-gazing. You hear a lot about his background, score-settling and even pop-culture tastes (one chapter includes several ‘Top-5’ lists of music and movies); as well as some self-analytical pop psychology.

“There are the many psychological barriers that keep people from seeing themselves as worthy of exercise or a healthy body, which often boils down to an anthropological us-vs-them mentality that reflexively dismisses wellness culture in favor of hedonistic self-destruction as a coping mechanism for one’s inferiority complexes, or at least this was my experience,” Hesse writes.

Older readers will remember just how demonized marijuana was, possibly for most of their lives. Now, not only has it been legalized in many states, but acceptance has increased exponentially. For those thrilled by that acceptance, and believe it should go further, “Runner’s High” will be a welcomed work and useful guide.

J. Byron lives in Arvada and is the host of the “World War II Movie Night” podcast.