The Post-Race Blues: What To Do When The Goal Is Over

The Post-Race Blues: What To Do When The Goal Is Over

You crossed the finish line. You got the medal. Maybe you PR’d, maybe you didn’t, but either way—you did the thing. Months of early alarms, long runs, tired legs, and calculated nutrition all led to that moment.

And then Monday came.

If you woke up this week feeling a little lost, a little flat, maybe even a little sad—and you couldn’t quite explain why—you’re not broken. You’re not ungrateful. You’re not being dramatic. What you’re feeling even has a name: post-race blues. And it happens to almost every runner who has ever cared about a goal, from first-timers to people who’ve toed the line more times than they can count.

I’ve felt it myself. And I’ve watched plenty of athletes feel it too.

Why It Happens

Here’s the thing your brain doesn’t tell you while you’re training: it gets just as invested in the process as you do. For weeks—maybe months—your entire routine was organized around one goal. Your alarm was set for a reason. Your meals were intentional. Your weekends had long runs in them. Your identity, whether you realized it or not, became wrapped up in being someone who was training for something.

And then, in a matter of hours, it was over.

Neurologically, there’s a real drop that happens. The dopamine that kept you motivated through hard workouts, the sense of purpose that got you out the door on days you didn’t feel like it—all of it loses its anchor when the goal disappears. Your body is also physically depleted in ways that affect your mood more than most people realize. Hormones, sleep, inflammation—they’re all in flux in the days after a hard effort. It’s not just in your head. It’s in your body too.

Knowing that doesn’t make it disappear, but it does make it make sense. Right?

What Not To Do

The temptation when you feel this way is to fix it fast. Sign up for another race immediately. Jump back into training before your body is ready. Fill the void before you’ve had a chance to feel it.

I get it. I really do. But resist that urge, at least for a few days.

Signing up for your next race out of panic rather than excitement is a great way to start a training cycle already running on empty—emotionally and physically. And abandoning all structure entirely, while tempting, usually just makes the flat feeling worse. You don’t need to do nothing. You just don’t need to do everything yet.

The other thing I’d encourage you to let go of? The idea that you should feel purely happy right now. You’re allowed to feel proud and depleted at the same time. You’re allowed to miss the training, miss the routine, miss the version of yourself who had something to chase. That’s not weakness. That’s just what it feels like when something that mattered is over.

What To Do Instead

Move your body, but gently and without a plan. Walk. Stretch. Do something that feels good rather than something that builds toward a goal. Your body has earned a little freedom.

Eat well and sleep more than usual. This isn’t the week to undercut your recovery with poor nutrition or late nights. Your muscles are rebuilding. Give them what they need. If you’re not sure what that looks like post-race, that’s a conversation worth having—fueling recovery is different from fueling performance, and most runners don’t give it nearly enough thought.

Reconnect with why you run in the first place. Not why you trained for this race. Why you run at all. Before the goal existed, before the training plan, before the alarm clocks—what was it that made you love this? Go find that for a little while.

And lean into your people. One of the quiet gifts of being part of a running community is that the people around you have felt exactly what you’re feeling. Show up to a group run not to train, but just to be around humans who get it. Sometimes that’s the best medicine there is.

One Last Thing

The post-race blues don’t mean the race wasn’t worth it. They mean it was. You cared enough to build your life around something for months. That’s not nothing—that’s actually pretty remarkable.
The goal is over. The runner isn’t.

Give yourself a few days. The next chapter will start when it’s ready to. And when it does, you’ll be glad you didn’t rush it.

-bk