Two things I am: a stoner and a runner. One thing I am not: a morning person. And to be clear, I don’t typically combine the first two activities. I’ve seen the trend on social media: fitness influencers taking a high-dose gummy before a long run. I gave it a try once, but I found that it made my run feel even more laborious, and the Texas heat even more unbearable. I ended up stopping at a convenience store on my walk home and buying a Gatorade and a straw hat adorned with a Texas flag ribbon. The hat did help a little.
Still, when I stumbled across Run High: Runners High Run Club, I was intrigued. I’m a sucker for anything that builds community, and this combined two of my interests. RHRxCLB is Texas’ first cannabis-friendly run club, founded in San Antonio by Christtina Guerrero. Part of the goal is to remove the stigma around cannabis use when it comes to the health and wellness community, and to help dispel the myth that stoners are lazy and inactive. That sounded great to me and I registered for the very first Austin run, excited to take part in something I hadn’t tried before. When I realized that the meet-up time for the run was 8am on a Saturday, I think I gulped audibly like a character in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
I really can’t argue with the logic. Past mid-morning, the heat radiating from the pavement in our fair city is enough to make a grown man cry. If you’re going to run in the morning, 8am is the time to do it. I am more of a sunset runner myself, dousing myself in bug spray and releasing any stagnant bad energy from the day while the Texas sky streaks blue and pink in my neighborhood park. (Although as everyone knows, the all-time best place to watch a Texas sunset is the parking lot of H-E-B.)
Not only am I an evening runner, I am also a Saturday morning sleeper-inner. As a childless and dogless millennial (we are the 1%), I have been known to luxuriate in my bed on a Saturday morning until 10am, sometimes even until noon. I feel I have earned this right after being tortured by my alarm for five days in a row (my current alarm track is “girl, get up” by Doechii, feat. SZA). On this Saturday morning, I made an exception to my beloved tradition of an alarmless sleep to see what these morning runners are on about.
Guerrero grew up in Crystal City, Texas, and has lived in Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, where she’s currently based. She has held a series of emotionally heavy jobs, including as a juvenile probation officer and in crisis case management at UT-Austin. Guerrero has also become a member of the hard of hearing community and described experiencing mistreatment in the workplace, ultimately becoming unemployed and suffering a major mental health crisis. She stated that for a long time, she used alcohol to cope while in crisis, a habit she also witnessed impacting the lives of many of the young people she worked with.
Guerrero told me that she started Run High during a manic episode in November of 2025. She had lost her job in higher education and was struggling with her newfound disability, searching for both community and healing. She had been prescribed medication that she did not feel was helping her and soon after had lost her health insurance and would be unable to pay for the prescription anyway, a story far too common in the U.S. “I lost my mind,” she told me. As she embarked on her healing journey. Guerrero found that two things made her feel better: being active and smoking weed.
As Guerrero started doing yoga regularly and going to run clubs, she noticed that her two interests rarely overlapped. “I had to go behind the tree during a run,” she laughed. As a hard of hearing runner, she also struggled with the running community’s habit of meeting at bars after runs to socialize – loud noises, abundant alcohol, and little or no THC options. At this point, Guerrero had quit alcohol completely.
The first RHRxCLB was held at Lazydaze in San Antonio. It started as a monthly get-together, attended by about 15 runners, but progressed to weekly, hosting up to 40 or 50 runners: some hard of hearing, some cannabis consumers, some allies. The inaugural Austin run I attended was hosted by the Healing Co. Dispensary, which generously provided us with a large container of prerolls.
Run High is dedicated to accessibility and intersectionality. Whether you are a stoner, a runner, a member of the deaf or hard of hearing community, alcohol sober, or (like Guerrero) all of these and more, the run club welcomes you without judgment. You can walk one really slow mile or run multiple. Guerrero encourages everyone to be very intentional about their cannabis consumption and practice it with a good mindset.
I learned an important lesson about myself that Saturday: I am a runner and a stoner in that specific order. After taking a few hits of a joint with nothing in my system other than a protein shake, I was too lightheaded to actually complete the run. I promptly sat down on the curb and contemplated my life choices as the group took off, sat in my car for about 30 minutes, then went to get some scrambled eggs and coffee before meeting back up with the group at Radio Rosewood to chat about the organization.
When it comes to combining your high with other activities, everyone has their limits. Some people can hit a joint and then go for a mile run; I can hit a joint and fold all my laundry or listen to an Alabama Shakes album from beginning to end. Some people are just built different, as the kids say. I may try a stoned run again sometime in the future, but the most important lesson I took from this experience is that I am not, and never will be, a morning person.
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This article appears in August 7 • 2026.
