Completing a marathon is supposed to be a euphoric experience—the result of months (sometimes years) of relentless training, sacrifice, and discipline. Yet for many runners, reaching the long-awaited finish line can bring up negative and unexpected feelings like hollowness, emptiness, and even sadness.
Many runners call this emotional comedown the “post-race blues.” “There’s so much build-up and so much excitement, and then all of a sudden, it’s just over,” Rachel Gersten, a licensed mental health counselor and cofounder of Viva Mental Health + Wellness, tells SELF. “It’s not like it slowly tapers off. It’s just done.”
Those bittersweet emotions can occur regardless of how your race went. Sure, it makes sense to feel bummed if you had to drop out or fell short of your time goal, but even completing your dream race can bring a sense of pre-grieving: “You also recognize that this may never happen again,” Gersten says. “Or it might be years until [you] feel this good at a race.”
So whether you’ve just wrapped a big fall race, or have one coming up on your schedule, here’s what you can expect afterward—and some ways to cope, from therapists who are also endurance runners themselves.
Prepare for the rise and the fall.
If you expect to be riding high after earning your medal but find yourself struggling instead, you might feel guilty or wonder if there’s something wrong with you, says Gersten, who’s run the New York City Marathon. This can send you into a spiral of negative thoughts, which is why it’s important to anticipate these lows as a typical part of the process.
To allow yourself a little emotional wiggle room, consider taking off the next day (or take off one more day after you get home, if you’ve traveled). That means no work and no other big obligations, if possible—and absolutely no working out. “Give yourself that period to feel how you’re gonna feel—to either be excited and to have a really fun day, or to just sit on the couch and feel your feelings,” Gersten says.
Take care of your body.
Any big effort—especially a race as long as a marathon—calls for significant recovery. The basics include practices like hydrating, foam rolling, and paying attention to any lingering pain that could signal an injury.
It’s also important to refuel. According to Stephanie Roth-Goldberg, LCSW-R, CEDS-S, certified eating disorder specialist and founder of Intuitive Psychotherapy in New York, many people don’t eat enough in the days after a race, either because they’re too fatigued or because they think that since they’re running less, they need to cut back.