The Last Word On Nothing

I did a big run on Saturday morning. On Saturday afternoon, I stuffed my face, had a welcome beer after a training dry spell, and felt glorious. Sunday morning I spent in bed, reading the New York Times in a puddle of pure contentment. Sunday night, I went to an epic dinner and felt the opposite of hangry.

Then Monday came. I hid from my kids in the bathroom, I cried when I dropped my mom off at the airport, I almost fired off several barely-civilized email responses (luckily, my phone died before I could hit send). In the afternoon, I yelled at my older son when he picked one too many blueberries on our way home and then I collapsed on the couch with a pillow over my face. What happened to my post-run halo?

This seemed like something more than coming down from runner’s high—a high that’s not completely understood.  I imagine the run left me with a healthy dose of endogenous opiods, and even my body’s own cannabanoids—but a two-day high seems a little excessive, and so does such a gnarly withdrawal period.

So I turned to my favorite diagnostician, Dr. Internet, and discovered two delightful new words for my possible condition. One: Post-Event Let-Down, or PELD.  Psychologist Jack Lesyk writes that this slump can happen to anyone with a goal: a politician, an athlete, a cap-and-gowned student who may be, at this very moment, listening to her commencement address. After a big event, the goal that organized your life suddenly vanishes, he says. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that a void lurks on the far side of achievement.

The word I like even better is schmung. Coined (as far as I can tell) by a Chicago-based endurance athlete, schmung seems like a good description of the way I feel—foggy and grumpy and, well, kind of a schmuck to those around me. (Although this definition of schmung might not have caught on yet.)

Whatever you call it, some say low as lasts for several weeks after the event. Common advice: give yourself permission to take it easy, using the time you spent training (studying, glad-handing) for your event to spend time with family and friends and pursue neglected activities. Planning future events can also make the calendar seem like less of a gaping maw.

My husband, who’s suffered through several of these races (and the even-more-challenging houseful of schmung afterward), reminded me what I said when we rolled into the race parking lot early Saturday morning. It was still dark, and I was nervous. Music blared through the campground; there was a bonfire, a race director dressed like a mariachi, and a handle of Jack Daniel’s on the registration table.

“I said something?” I asked him today on the phone.

“You don’t remember?” He laughed. “You said, ‘This is fun, this is fun, this is fun.’”

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Images by Flickr usera Sam Webster (top) and Anna Loverus (bottom)