After the Program Ends: What Comes Next
Trail Notes | Recovery & Off Season
the in-between space counts too
After the Program Ends,
What Comes Next.
The program had a start date, a finish date and a plan for every week in between. Then the race happens, and none of that structure exists anymore.
For many of us, that gap is more disorienting than the training itself.
Trail Note · 01
The Comedown Is a Real Thing, Not a Mood
A 2024 study interviewed 16 recreational endurance athletes, 6 of them women, about the weeks after a race of 3 hours or more, across running, cycling, cross-country skiing and Ironman events. Of the 16, 7 described emptiness, a void or mild depressive symptoms once the race was behind them, a pattern the researchers called post-race blues. For those athletes the low lasted from 1 to 8 weeks, and most settled within 2 to 3.
There is a physiological layer too, though it is less clear cut. In the hours after a long hard effort, immune markers shift, an idea often called the open window. Whether that means more illness for recreational runners is far less settled.
In a study of 1,694 Stockholm Marathon runners, 17% reported an infection in the 3 weeks before the race and 19% in the 3 weeks after, which the authors did not read as an increase caused by the race. The difference was in who started unwell: 33% of runners who were already sick before the race had another infection afterwards, compared with 16% of those who started healthy. If you are carrying a cold into race week, that is worth taking seriously.
Some of us feel flat rather than triumphant, even after a result we are proud of. Others feel a real low. Both are documented responses to a big training and racing block ending, not a sign that something has gone wrong.
7 of 16 athletes in one study described the time after a big race as an emptiness or void, not the finish line high they expected.
There is also an identity piece. For months, a large part of the week was organised around this goal, and when the race is done, that structure disappears in a single weekend.
Trail Note · 02
This Is Not the Same as the Off Season
The off season is a training question: reduced load, aerobic rebuilding and unstructured time before the next block begins. That is a periodisation decision.
This is a different one. It is the question we ask standing at the finish line, medal in hand, wondering what we are supposed to do with ourselves on Monday.
Trail Note · 03
3 Honest Paths, Not One Right Answer
There is no single right answer for what comes after a goal race. Most of us will recognise ourselves in one of these 3 options.
3 ways to use the weeks after
Rest without a plan, for a defined stretch: A stretch of 2 to 4 weeks is common, depending on the distance raced and how your body is responding. The goal is not fitness maintenance, it is stepping back.
Move with no destination: Walking, easy trail time, a Sunday group run with no watch. This keeps the habit of showing up without asking your body to perform, and it is often where the next goal starts to surface on its own.
Choose the next thing deliberately, not by default: Separate the decision from the comedown. Making it in week 3 or 4, once sleep and mood have settled, tends to serve us better than deciding in the flat days right after the race.
Final Trail Note
What to Actually Do With the In-Between Weeks
A few things help most of us, whatever comes next. Name the flat feeling out loud, in your Circle or on a Coaching Call, because carrying it quietly tends to make it bigger. Keep one small anchor, like a weekly coffee walk, with no training intent attached.
Give the what's next question real time before you answer it. If the low is heavy, lasts beyond a few weeks or starts affecting your sleep, work or relationships, please speak with your GP or a mental health professional.
The in-between space is not empty time between the parts of training that count. For many of us, it is where the next block quietly gets its shape.
Her Trails coaching cue
A next goal chosen from a place of rest and curiosity trains differently than one chosen to avoid sitting with the gap. There is no fixed timeline for choosing what's next.
Research informing this Trail Note
Augustsson, Bergh & Petersson (2024), Post-race reactions: the emotional paradox of high performance and anxiety, a conventional content analysis. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation. Interviews with 16 recreational endurance athletes.
Ekblom, Ekblom & Malm (2006), Infectious episodes before and after a marathon race. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 16(4), 287 to 293. Questionnaires from 1,694 Stockholm Marathon runners.
rest is not the opposite of training, it is part of it
Written by the Her Trails coaching team
Trail Notes are evidence-informed coaching journals written for women who train, race and run on trails.
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