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Wiz Khalifa Wants Stoners to Start Running. A Colorado Lab Already Tested Exactly That.
Wiz Khalifa is telling stoners to start running. A CU Boulder lab put 42 runners on treadmills to see what cannabis really does to a run.
Wiz Khalifa has spent the last five weeks turning his Instagram into a running log.
An 8-kilometer effort in 45:36 on August 2, a 5K in 31:51 a few days later, and a recent 5K personal best of 23:31.
He logged 51 kilometers in a single week between August 17 and 23. That is a real training block, not a photo op.
The line most people remember from his posts is different: "I ripped a bong then ripped 5 miles." That is the tension the whole story sits on.
It is also the exact question a University of Colorado Boulder team already tried to answer in a lab.
They recruited 42 runners, put them on treadmills, and measured what actually changes when you run high.
The answer, published in Sports Medicine, is not what either side of the argument wants it to be.
What Khalifa is actually pushing back on
Khalifa has addressed the obvious contradiction directly.
He smokes and he runs, and he does not think the two have to be mutually exclusive.
That is a public position with real reach behind it, since he posts to 39 million Instagram followers. Nike Running, Strava, and Coros were all in his comments within a day of his first running post.
He is also not a couch start. Khalifa has trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu under Rigan Machado since at least 2018, which explains part of why his 5K time dropped roughly eight minutes in five weeks.
Years of grappling leave behind an aerobic base that surfaces the moment you point it at a road.
Consider that context when the pace numbers look surprising for a beginner.
None of that answers the real question, though. The real question is whether the cannabis part is helping the running part, hurting it, or doing something more interesting than either.
What a Colorado lab found when they put 42 runners on treadmills
Laurel Gibson and Angela Bryan at CU Boulder ran the first laboratory study to test how commercially available cannabis products affect the way running actually feels.
Their paper landed in Sports Medicine in late 2023.
The design mattered. They recruited 42 runners who already ran while using cannabis, then had each person do the same treadmill session twice, once sober and once after using a legal-market product.
Half the group used a THC-dominant flower. Half used a CBD-dominant flower.
Finding 1: the runs felt better
Across the whole sample, runners reported greater enjoyment and a more intense runner's high when they ran after using cannabis compared to when they ran sober.
The surprise inside that finding is the direction.
The mood lift was stronger in the CBD group than in the THC group, not the other way around.
The researchers suggest athletes may be able to get some of the enjoyment benefit without the impairment that comes with getting high.
That is a materially different message than the one most cannabis marketing tells you.
Finding 2: the runs also felt harder
Participants in the THC group reported that the same intensity of running felt significantly harder during the cannabis run than during the sober run.
Bryan's working explanation is cardiovascular.
THC increases heart rate, which means your body is already partway up the effort curve before you take the first step.
You still finish the workout. You just pay for it earlier.
A previous field study from the same group backs this up with a number: runners felt more enjoyment when high, and they also ran, on average, 31 seconds per mile slower.
If you have any way to track your heart rate honestly, that is where the effect would show up first.
What this actually means for a stoner who wants to start running
There are two ways to read Khalifa's message, and only one of them is supported by the evidence.
The reading that survives the lab: cannabis will not turn you into a faster runner, and it will probably make hard efforts feel worse.
But it may lower the barrier that keeps a lot of new runners from lacing up in the first place, which is that most people do not find their early runs enjoyable.
Bryan has said the field needs new tools to get sedentary adults moving. If cannabis is one of those tools, in her words, it is worth exploring, "keeping in mind both the harms and the benefits."
The reading that does not survive: that getting high before a run is somehow performance-enhancing. Bryan's conclusion is blunt.
Cannabis is not a performance-enhancing drug.
It is a mood modifier that happens to sit next to your workout, not a booster inside it.
Three things Khalifa is getting right, whatever you think of the smoking
He is not trying to quit vices before he starts moving
The number one reason most beginners quit is that they set the bar somewhere at the top of a stairway. Quit smoking, lose 15 pounds, then start running.
Khalifa flipped that order. He started running while still doing everything else he was doing.
That is closer to how behavior actually changes, and it is the same trap detailed in this look at common beginner runner mistakes and how to avoid them.
He treated the first week like a real week
Three miles one day, five miles the next, on vacation, with a headlamp for the night run.
That is not a Couch to 5K prescription, but it is a real pattern.
Consistency in the first month, at almost any pace, builds an aerobic base faster than an occasional hard effort ever will.
His progression from a 31-minute 5K to 23:31 across five weeks is exactly what that looks like when a decent base is already in place under the surface.
He is running in public
Accountability is not just a personality trait. It is a running strategy.
Khalifa turned 39 million followers into a soft deadline.
That is a bigger version of what a running club or a shared Strava feed does for the rest of us.
The celebrity effect on running participation is real. It is the same reason a certain tech founder's casual 5K time became a whole conversation last year, as seen in this piece on Mark Zuckerberg's 5K time.
The part nobody is saying out loud
The CU Boulder team was careful. Their sample was 42 people who already ran while using cannabis, which is not the same as a random adult picking up both habits at once.
There is also a heart rate question that has not been answered yet.
THC raised resting heart rate before running in the study, and running raises it further.
What that does over years, at volume, in a habitual user, has not been tested. Bryan herself has said it is too early to make broad recommendations.
None of that changes the strongest finding in the paper, which is that a run after cannabis, particularly CBD, felt better than a run without it. For a message aimed at people who have never enjoyed exercise, that is not nothing.
You can read the university's plain-English summary of the study, or the full paper on PMC, if you want the numbers in the original.
The scoreboard, once you strip out the noise
Khalifa is not the first celebrity to catch the running bug, and he is not the last. What makes his particular version worth writing about is who he is talking to.
He is not aimed at the people who already run.
He is aimed at the people who have spent years being told that their lifestyle disqualifies them from being athletes.
The science, for once, does not entirely disagree with him. It just wants him to be honest about the trade.
Slower, harder, more enjoyable.
Three findings, in that order, from a controlled trial.
Anyone starting from zero can work with that.
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