The Journey
by Micah McKamie
One of the interesting things that I found over the last year and through my training through terps journey was how crucial mental health is to the process. This is not an article telling you to move away from your meds or to go cold turkey into this process, because don’t let me kid you, I had some dark days myself.
Healing and processing past traumas and experiences are not the easiest tasks. When we think about healing we think about moving on, forgetting it happened, or worse, ignoring the lesson. Lucky for me, Covid provided me with ample time to dig into old wounds.
As the pain and emotions came out in a variety of manifestations including; angry crying while sprinting on the treadmill, an hour-long session with the punching bag leaving my hands bloody, and 3 hours of mediation after a particularly heavy smoke and yoga session. Giving myself the ability to heal through fitness was really what began the training through terps idea.
I would get high with a solid wake and bake session and get all amped up, something would hit my emotional trigger weird that day and it would just come out – go run!!! Go throw big rocks in the back yard. Do pull-ups and pushups until you can’t move. These emotionally and physically exhausting workouts fueled this athlete that I had never known had existed.
I spent so many years killing myself, dieting, and doing crazy workouts and only to always be just right there. In my mind and in my soul I could feel that there was an untapped resource. That idea that you only use 10% of your abilities. I could honestly feel that power there.
It wasn’t until I opened up, changed the way I thought about working out, introduced Cannabis and emotions, and allowed music to drive the tempo, that I started to see that untapped potential. At 39 years old I am still running 8-mile intervals and training for longer competitions. The best thing about it all has been the interesting people I have met in the process.
Kenny is a long time cannabis advocate who does Ultra-Marathons while doing dabs at each rest station and is hands down one of the coolest guys. He cares about the community, is a part of a running group called Wahoo Runs, and is dedicated to removing the stigma of cannabis just like myself. The first time we hung out we smoked in his car, did some dabs, and then ran 6 miles while talking about random high things.
Now, I told this story to point out a cool effect of cannabis on your workouts. We ran 6 miles and didn’t feel a thing, almost didn’t know we ran that far, then went to City Bites and demolished some sandies, and got to have some very cool conversations.
I could throw a lot of medical details at you as reasons to utilize cannabis in your workouts or give you anecdotes of people that make it seem like cannabis is the fountain of youth, but stories like this one highlight the real reason. It’s all about expanding our horizons. Meeting interesting new people that will aid in our growth and you in theirs.
Cannabis not only spurs emotions and energies, but it brings people together, and in this case to run a crapload. I hope as this journey continues and people become more open about their canna-centric fitness regimes, that you will see that we have been hiding in plain sight.