If your mood is a bit flat now that your race is behind you, this is what’s happening and how to deal with it
In the months leading up to a marathon, thoughts of your big race can completely dominate your life. You’ll have spent months training on most days, planning your nutrition strategy, probably getting up at weird times and perhaps investing in some new gear along the way. On race day itself, you might be buoyed by the huge crowds, pushing yourself as hard as you can to really feel like you’ve earned that chunky medal. Hell, yes – you can keep it up all day.
It’s an incredible feeling, especially if your race is a huge spectacle like the London Marathon. But it soon wears off – and a few days-post race, you may start to feel flat. This is called the post-marathon blues.
‘Whatever the distance of the race, if you have trained hard for it and it was important to you, then once it physically ends, you might have a psychological hangover in the shape of post-race blues,’ explains sport psychologist Josephine Perry, director of Performance in Mind. ‘These usually pop-up midweek when the euphoria of finishing and the post-race DOMs start to subside and you get a dip in mood.’
And it doesn’t just happen to amateur runners, either. ‘Working in high-performance or the military, it’s expected,’ says consultant psychiatrist and sports psychiatrist for ASICS Europe Dr Amit D Mistry, who works with elite athletes and private patients at his outpatient clinic at the Nightingale Hospital, central London. ‘We know that as you go through such pain and intense emotions, it’s perfectly normal to have that afterwards.
‘If you’re thinking about elite sport pre-competition training, athletes do become quite regimented, as this is functional for them in their unique circumstance – they’re thinking about performance metrics, training and how they eat,’ Mistry continues. ‘And then, when you step away from performance, competition or just training, that’s quite hard, because you’ve been really focused on something for a long time. And that can be quite a shock.’
Post-Olympic depression is also a thing, with athletes such as the much-decorated swimmer Michael Phelps speaking publicly about the lows that come after the highs of these career peak events. In fact, a study from 2024 looked at the experiences of almost 25,000 former athletes across disciplines and found that ‘prevalence of anxiety and depression in former elite athletes could be over twice that of the general population.’ Running is generally known for being good for our mental health, but something different seems to happen in the aftermath of a significant race.
It might feel like you suddenly have too much spare time after all that training, or that you are missing the structure of the regime that you developed to prepare for the marathon. It can feel like you no longer have the powerful sense of purpose that drove you towards race day – so how do you recover from this post-race comedown? Here’s what you need to know.
Why do people get the post-marathon blues?
There are three ways in which this post-marathon flatness can be manifested and explained: biological, psychological and socio-environmental. From a biological perspective, it’s the change in our internal chemical mix that can cause a problem. Running and other exercise causes our body to produce endorphins – better known as the ‘runner’s high’. It works a bit like morphine – reducing feelings of pain and increasing feelings of pleasure and positivity. Meanwhile, you’re also producing endocannabinoids, which give a similar feeling of calmness to their semi-namesake. Once the marathon is over and the intense training schedule ends, it’s understandable that we would feel lower when there are less of these chemicals floating around.
‘There’s a really fascinating study that was done quite a few years ago, which looked at people who were regularly doing physical activity.’ says Mistry. ‘They essentially just stopped people from exercising. And what they saw was a huge rebound in depressive symptoms and anxiety.’
The psychological impact of no longer training for a race relates to things like our self-esteem, too. ‘If we think about the psychosocial aspect, there is something about getting good at an activity,’ says Mistry. ‘There is something about the mastery and the boost to your self-esteem, as well as the social aspect. If you’re training, you tend to be socialised. And if you take that away from somebody, you’ve lost a huge component – that biopsychosocial type set-up.’
Although race day might be the biggest high, you are still totting up smaller wins throughout training that add up to a consistent buzz of good feeling. You’re ticking off sessions as done and experiencing an improvement in physical fitness that inevitably lifts the mood. Dopamine is probably best known as the chemical that gives you a boost when you get a like on Instagram, but it also spikes with exercise and when we achieve the goals that we’ve set. It’s a neurotransmitter that increases positive feelings, such as preparing for and conquering that race.
The withdrawal from dopamine in the days following the event could also help to explain our drop in mood. ‘Dopamine is linked to our internal reward system called the mesolimbic pathway,’ says Mistry. ‘It can be a positive thing, but it can be a double-edged sword as it can be highly addictive. However, for the majority of society, exercise is brilliant – it’s just in rarer cases that it could become a problem in terms of addiction.’
When do the post-marathon blues go away?
According to both Mistry and Perry, the post-marathon blues don’t last for too long and aren’t anything to worry about. ‘It usually clears up pretty quickly and there are lots of things that we can do to make ourselves feel better,’ says Perry. ‘Most people find that it only lasts a few days.’
During this time, try speaking to someone you can chat to in psychological safely about how you’re feeling. ‘It is important that you have someone who you completely trust and who you know is on your side,’ says Perry. ‘A sports psychologist is brilliant for this. If this isn’t in your budget, try a really good friend, family member or someone from your sports club who you feel able to chat with and won’t spread gossip.’
If you’re still feeling low in mood after two weeks for most of the day, Mistry advises seeking help in the form of your GP or a mental health professional, as this may indicate something more serious. ‘At this point, we would assess mood rating, energy levels, motivation, sleep habits, concentration levels, appetite – and whether someone still finds pleasure in the hobbies that they’re doing,’ he says. ‘This will then be reviewed on how this is impacting on daily function. In extreme circumstances, people may feel suicidal. These are the typical symptoms that we would look at when diagnosing depression. We may also assess patients in clinic for overtraining syndrome or RED-S, which can very closely mimic – and overlap with – depressive symptoms.’
However, in most cases, the post-marathon blues will resolve by itself, reassures Mistry. ‘It’s perfectly normal and, more often than not, will get better by itself.’
How can you get over the post-marathon blues?
Mistry recommends doing what the professionals do: analysing your race soon after it’s over. It’s known as a ‘hot debrief’, where you write down your takeaways from the event. What did you learn? What went well? What was less successful? What will you try to do differently next time? It’s all about processing your marathon as fully as possible. He also suggests coming back to it for a second race debrief at a later time.
‘This is the process that we commonly see in high-performance sport – an example would be in Olympic cycles. Many institutions have followed that model and that’s derived from military type interventions and medical-type settings.’
Perry agrees that it’s important to take some time away from training, so resist the urge to jump into signing up for another race right away. ‘You need time to both mentally and physically rest and recover,’ she explains. ‘You may also need to earn back some brownie points from loved ones for the single-mindedness that you needed to have in the marathon build-up. Now is the time to support others for a few weeks in their endeavours.’
That said, it’s still a good idea to get some future plans in the diary, so that you know where to focus your attention once the race is over. ‘It could be a holiday or trying out a different sport for a few weeks, goal setting – to work on what you want to achieve next – or giving time back to those who have supported you recently,’ says Perry.
She also recommends maintaining the connections taht you may have made throughout your marathon training journey – be it via running clubs or running friends you made on social media. ‘Having a sense of belonging to the sport that we do and the community that we interact with is incredibly important for motivation,’ she says.
After taking a break, you’re then more likely to be able to view your race more objectively. ‘It’s after we’ve processed emotions that we can get objective,’ says Mistry. ‘So then, you can really look at the stats, your performance and how can you could do things differently next time.’
If you miss doing physical activity, running coach Sam Murphy suggests building some light cross-training into your days while avoiding running for at least five to six days post-race. At this point, she recommends trying a ‘test’ run lasting between 20 and 30 minutes, observing any enduring aches or pains.
However, she warns that it’s important not to jump straight back into your running routine, as this will only increase your injury risk. ‘Burn off your excess energy with one or two weeks of light cross-training,’ advises Murphy. ‘Swim, cycle, use the elliptical or do other low-impact activities every other day for the same amount of time that you would otherwise spend running. If you experience any soreness, minor aches or fatigue, take a few days off and rest.’
