うたぴょんスポーツOn Sunday, September 14, we went to the Sumida Autumn Record Meet, a local track and field time trial in Sumida, Tokyo. Uta is in fourth grade now, nine years old, and she was down to run two events: the 600m and the 100m.
Later that same day we headed to the National Stadium for World Athletics 2025. One race day, two very different kinds of running.
How the day went
Before her race, Uta told the camera her events straight out: 600m and 100m. Her targets were simple too — 2 minutes flat for the 600m, 15 seconds for the 100m. She said she'd do her best, shook off a bit of nerves, and lined up.
Record meets like this one are low-key by design, no big crowd, just athletes and stopwatches, which is part of why they're useful for a kid her age to test herself against a number rather than against other runners.
The race itself
She ran the 600m in 2:02, a personal best. We couldn't get a clean read on her split time because the watch wasn't running properly on the course, so we don't know exactly how she was paced through the race. Afterward I told her she'd ballooned too much in the last section, meaning she slowed more than she should have after a fast start.
The 100m came with a wrinkle: officials found the course was about 10 meters short, so her clocked 14.5 seconds wasn't really a 100m time. Worked out properly, that puts her somewhere just under 16 seconds for a true 100m, probably close to 15.9. Given her target was 15 seconds, that's a solid run once you account for the short course.
What a parent took away from it
A faulty watch and a short course meant we left with fuzzier data than usual, which is its own small lesson: trust the official time, but don't build your whole read of the race around numbers you can't fully verify. What I could see clearly was the pacing issue in the 600m — going out fast and fading is a pattern worth working on before her next record meet. I told her the ballooning, not the start, is what to fix next.
Anything left over that matters
Uta also showed up on Nスタ, a Japanese TV news program, standing next to a 'running girl' segment — that clip is linked in the video description around the 10:29 mark if you want to see it. We're also selling Utapyon T-shirts now, which was a nice bit of news to share alongside the race results.
Anything left over that matters
That evening we went to the National Stadium for day two of World Athletics 2025, the night session. There we ran into a boy Uta knows through Instagram, now a first-year junior high student running for Ehime Academy, who told us his personal bests: 4 minutes 19 seconds for 1500m and 9 minutes 10 seconds for 3000m. Hearing numbers like that from someone only a bit older than her is its own kind of motivation. Uta's verdict on the elite racing that night was short and honest: it was amazing, and way faster than she expected.
Next up is fixing that pacing in the 600m, and we'll see if the timing works out properly at her next meet. The video title also teases her first attempt at a warped-wall obstacle, Sasuke-style, so that may be coming in a future post.
The video has her race prep, both results, and the trip to watch the World Athletics night session up close.