うたぴょんスポーツFirst race of the year, and it did not go quite to plan. On January 4th, Uta ran the Kagamiishi NY Ekiden 2026 — an ekiden, which is a road relay where team-mates pass a sash instead of a baton — in Kagamiishi, a small town in Fukushima, northeast Japan.
Five teams from our running group entered this year, split into a higher-grade division and a lower-grade division. Uta ran as part of the third-grade team, Dream Team, lining up alongside a second-grade Dream Team and three teams in the older bracket.
How the day went
New Year races always have a slightly different feel — everyone a little more awake than usual, a little more nervous. This was no different. Our group showed up with five full teams, which meant a busy morning of bib numbers, warm-ups, and kids bouncing between divisions to cheer each other on.
Uta was in good spirits going in. She has had a strong year on the track — she ended up ranked 10th nationally in the 1000m for third-grade girls in 2024 — so she had reason to feel confident stepping up to the start line of the third-grade Dream Team.
But an ekiden is never just about your own legs. You are running for the team, and whatever happens on the course, good or strange, happens in front of everyone.
The race itself
That is more or less what happened here. Partway through the relay, something unexpected came up mid-race — the kind of moment the title calls a chinjiken, a strange little incident, rather than anything serious. It was not part of the plan, and it clearly threw a wrench into the smooth handoff everyone had pictured.
To her credit, Uta kept moving. An ekiden does not pause for surprises; the sash still has to get to the next runner. She pushed through whatever had just happened and handed off, which is really the only thing you can ask of a nine-year-old in that moment.
The description does not list the final result, and I am not going to guess at one. What I can say is that every team, across both divisions, finished the day having given it a real effort — and from what I saw, everyone was still smiling by the end.
What a parent took away from it
You cannot train for every possible hiccup. You can only train a kid to keep her feet moving when one shows up. That is the part I was proudest of watching back — not a split time, not a placing, just Uta not stopping.
Afterward I did not ask her to replay the moment or analyze what went wrong. I told her the handoff happened, the team finished, and that is the whole job in an ekiden. We will talk tactics another day, on a day when nothing strange happens and there is actually something to tactic about.
What I do want to work on with her, gently, is the mental side of running through a surprise without losing her rhythm. Races rarely go exactly to script, and the earlier she gets comfortable with that, the better — not because it will make her faster, but because it will make her steadier.
Next up for Uta is whatever the January race calendar throws at us, and knowing this group, that will be soon. For now, I am just glad the New Year's first race ended in laughter rather than tears.
The full mishap is in the video above if you want to see exactly what a chinjiken looks like mid-ekiden.