What happens at the end of cross-country season when you don't get the PR? When you have trained all season to get that certain mark or placement at Conference or State, and it doesn't happen?

First, let's analyze a possible reason. The saying that endurance running is a mental sport is especially true for high pressure meets. There is so much demand to do well at State and at Conference—whether this pressure is put on by coaches or parents, teammates, or oneself—this pressure can be crushing.

Runners sometimes set unattainable, or difficult to attain goals. I remember one season when I told my runners to dream of a goal that “was just a little bit beyond attainable.”  Weeks after this, a runner was extremely disappointed in his performance at State, even though I felt he ran well. This runner, who had never broken 18 minutes, looked at me and said, “But I set a goal to win, and I wasn’t even close.” He was disappointed because he set an unattainable dream and then spent time berating himself for something that was so far out of his range, and I felt like I couldn't pull him back.

However, even runners who set a goal that is within their capabilities can suffer the frustration of post-season disappointment. The buildup of State—the conversations with teammates, coaches, classmates and family continue to build that perceived expectation of ending the season perfectly. Furthermore, at the line, as the starter's countdown announcements of 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, plus the feeling of both wanting the race to just start and needing more time—all of this is a battle that plays havoc on the mind.

During the race, the runner reminds himself of his strategy: how to get out, who he should be next to at the 800, and where to be at the first mile… this furthers the constant mental battle. And so, the end race doesn't just have a finishing time or a finishing place; it can sometimes feel like a series of small failures within the race as a whole.

Thus, an athlete that walks away from Conference or State feeling like he hasn't accomplished what he set out to do doesn’t simply beat himself up because of the moment of crossing the finish line- he is reliving all five kilometers and every moment he feels that he failed.

A second reason for poorer performance than hoped is physical. Not withstanding the fact that the coach has probably planned workouts to make each individual peak at just the right time, and most likely, the athlete has taken sleep, recovery, eating, and hydrating seriously. So, he is actually physically perfect for the meet. The physical battle here is the build up to the race; few days before, traveling, eating unfamiliar foods, and sleeping in a hotel room with different noises and lights—these factors may make the stomach unsettled or cause a feeling of exhaustion from poor sleep or riding in a bus or van for hours. Athletes tend to think about all the things that he or she did "wrong" in the last two days and think (consciously or not): well, I've already messed this up, even before stepping up to the line.  

Putting all this together, along with a new course with the top athletes in one's division competing all together sometimes makes something like the state meet seem like the absolute toughest course of the whole season.

The Question Remains: What Now? How Do I Fix This?

As a runner, a coach, and a mother of runners, I have seen this and I personally know this situation both personally as well as vicariously. The good news is that the athlete has some options post-race. One of these options will happen, but the intentional athlete makes the choice himself, instead of allowing the choice to happen to him.

Option 1: Dwell on it. This choice, unfortunately, gives power to these negative and self-berating emotions to affect future seasons. Sometimes it takes athletes an excessive amount of time to recover from emotional failure. 

Option 2: Ignore it. Push it away. Pretend it didn’t happen. Move on. This is usually what happens to the athletes who feel they need to protect themselves from criticism from others. Don’t think about it, state that the results were fine. The problem with this strategy is that nothing changes. High pressure meets are still crushing, and the pattern repeats- success, then becomes a matter of chance.

And Option 3: Give oneself a timeline to think about it: to feel the pain of regret, to obsess about what should happened, but at the end of the time, move. The deadline is the most important factor. In a sensational episode of the TV show Lost that aired in 2004, Jack Shepard tells Kate Austen to allow herself to feel the negative emotion of fear, not to ignore it:  “Let the fear in. Let it take over. Let it do its thing. But only for five seconds. That's all I was gonna give it.”

Setting a timeline to allow oneself to feel the self-doubt, the disappointment, the frustrations, and the what-ifs is important because then Option 2 is negated, and then, this deadline takes away Option 1's power. The timeline—10 minutes? 3 days? Could be a week. It doesn't matter as long as it's not a forever feeling. Setting the time frame is what is important. Then, at the end of the timeline, the next step is to take the regrets and turn them into lessons.

In a 2025 study, psychologists David Neumann and Mikayla McInnes examined how athletes respond to performance failures. They created an experiment that allowed for athletes to write about a negative performance, analyze it, and then reframe it into a lesson. The results showed a larger reduction in self-blaming and self-criticizing ruminations to those who completed a neutral writing exercise. Post-writing, Neumann and McInnes concluded that “The magnitude of the reduced self-critical rumination behaviors, increased positive affect, and reduced negative affect was greater in the Intervention group than in the Control group.” Thus, those that were give the space and challenge to work through their thoughts and apply a didactic concept were better able to own and learn from disappointments than those were given the task of committing their perceived failures to paper and analyzing them.

In other words, there is a difference between reflecting on a disappointing race and allowing that race to define a person. The goal isn't to pretend the disappointment didn't happen. The goal is to learn from it without allowing it to become a large part of how a person sees himself as an athlete.

I spoke to a runner earlier this season; he reflected about an important race from a previous season, and how he didn't perform the way in which he wanted.  He said he never—never—wanted to feel that way again. Along the same vein, I saw a post on Facebook once that said something like "Are PRs worth it? " With a sub post commenting on the level of pain it takes in training and during the race and how it takes so much commitment and effort to shave just a few seconds off. This question was dropped in a runner’s group and there were over 1,000 responses. The runners almost unanimously said they would take the pain and effort of a PR over the pain of regret. One poster voiced that the PR lasts five minutes, but isn’t really felt because of the exhilaration of the moment outweighed it, but the pain of regret lasts much, much longer. 

Another area of sports psychology looks at self-compassion. Researchers have found that athletes who show greater self-compassion tend to have more adaptive responses to failure, fewer negative thoughts, and less negative emotion when recalling a disappointing performance. In their abstract, researchers Kuchar, Neff,  and Mosewich explain that "athletes often believe that self-criticism is necessary to avoid complacency, but this attitude can lead to anxiety and stress. Research shows that self-compassion is an adaptive way to relate to mistakes and challenges. "

This is important because sometimes athletes believe that being hard on themselves is what makes them better. They believe that if they don't criticize every mistake, they won't improve. But there is a difference between holding oneself accountable and constantly beating oneself up. 

Psychology talks about small habits leading to creating character—the idea of reprogramming one's brain, essentially. Sean Covey discusses heavily in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

Covey explains, "All change begins with you" and then continues his chapter with multiple ideas of being effective, but focuses on two core concepts: be honest and be gentle with yourself. Covey's main concept of this text is that the small, repeated choices we make shape the way we see ourselves and who we eventually become.

His father, Stephen R. Covey, discusses a similar idea in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He writes, "Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose." He of course, was speaking about general choices in life, but this philosophy applies nicely to the sport of endurance running as well. An athlete cannot always control the outcome of a race, the competition, or even the conditions on race day, the drive time or how his stomach will react to that ill-advised fettuccine Alfredo, but an athlete can control how he or she responds to disappointment... the discipline of five minutes, the discipline of an hour. 

As both Coveys explain, these small disciplines of mental exercises create habits, which shape character, and ultimately shapes one’s destiny.

To reiterate, allowing yourself to create a habit of constantly beating yourself up isn't healthy. Allowing yourself to create a habit of pretending like something didn't happen when your failure to perform at the level you wanted didn't happen, and then forgetting about it, doesn't change who you are at the core.

But giving yourself time to process, to forgive yourself, and then developing the desire to improve… this is what creates and shapes a runner’s future. 

1. Neumann, D. & McInnes, M. (2025)." A Brief Writing Intervention Assists Athletes to Cope With Performance Failures."

2. Strachan et al. (2019). "Self-Compassion and Psycho-Physiological Recovery From Recalled Sport Failure."

3. Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

4. Covey, Sean. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

5. Lost (2004). Season 1, Episode 1, "Pilot, Part 1." ABC.