うたぴょんスポーツThis post is from April 19, 2026. Uta just started fifth grade, so she's about 9, born early in 2016. Lately her middle-distance races and her long jump haven't been going well.
Not in practice — in practice she looks good. It's race day itself that's been the problem.
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Why this session
We've had a run of competitions now where Uta trains fine during the week but can't put it together when it counts. That gap between practice and race day is the thing we're trying to understand right now, not fix in one afternoon.
She's 9, newly in fifth grade, and I think there's more going on in her head than there used to be. Kids this age start noticing results, start comparing themselves, start feeling pressure that wasn't there before. Her events — middle-distance running and the long jump — are both ones where you're alone out there with no teammate to lean on, so any nerves show up directly in the performance.
I want to be careful not to turn this into a technical problem when it might just be an emotional one. You can't coach your way out of a kid working through new feelings about competing. You can only make space for it.
So this session wasn't about fixing her start or her jump mechanics. It was about getting through a normal training day and seeing how she talked about it afterward — especially once the pressure of 'performing' was off.
How it actually went
The real moment came during the down jog — the easy cool-down jog after the main work was done. No stopwatch, no event, nobody watching her time. And that's when she told me she loves running. That it's fun.
That's the whole point, really. When you strip away the result, the thing underneath is still there — she likes doing this. That's not a small thing to hear from a kid who's just had a string of races that didn't go the way she wanted.
My job here is to keep saying the same thing out loud: results are something to chase in high school, not at 9. Right now the work is just showing up and doing the training, not carrying the weight of every race. She's ranked 10th nationally for her age group from 2024, the 1000m for third-grade girls, so she clearly has ability. But that ranking belongs to a different season, a different year of her, and it doesn't need to sit on her shoulders during this one.
Is this sustainable? I think so, as long as I keep the measuring stick off to the side. The practices are going well. The training load isn't the issue. What she needs from me right now isn't more correction — it's patience, and reminders that the sport is bigger than any one race result at 9 years old.
One caution if you're watching a young runner go through something similar: don't chase the bad race with more volume or more pressure. A rough patch at this age is often just growing up, not a training gap. We're going to keep the sessions steady and let the cool-down jogs do some of the talking.