うたぴょんスポーツOn Sunday, January 25, 2026, Uta ran in the Shinjuku City Half Marathon, a big marathon event held right in central Tokyo. She wasn't running the half marathon herself — she was in the 2km race for fourth-grade girls, one of several shorter races held alongside the main event.
Uta is 9, born early in 2016, so she's one of the younger kids in her grade group. This was less about chasing a personal best and more about enjoying a big-stage event.
How the day went
The Shinjuku City Half Marathon is a large-scale event, and that showed in everything around the race — crowds, announcers, the works. Uta seemed to enjoy the atmosphere more than she was nervous about it. Races this size don't come around often for an elementary schooler, so just being there, lined up with other kids her age, was part of the experience.
The race itself
Uta's event was the 2km race in the fourth-grade girls' division. At this distance the race goes by fast — there's not much time to settle into a rhythm before it's over. I don't have her exact finishing time or place from this one, but what stood out was how the event was run: there was proper video camera coverage of the race, and an awards ceremony afterward, which is a nice touch you don't always get at smaller local races.
What a parent took away from it
Big events like this are useful for a different reason than fast times. Uta gets used to crowds, noise, waiting around before a race, and the slightly longer day that comes with a major event compared to a small local meet. That matters as much as pace work at this age. My main note to her was simple: enjoy the size of it, don't let the crowd rush you at the start, and run your own race for 2km. We'll keep working on pacing over short distances like this one in practice, since 2km rewards a calm start more than a fast one.
Anything left over that matters
Uta's also been getting a bit more attention lately — she appeared briefly on Nスタ, a Japanese evening news program, alongside another young runner known online as Rungal-chan, which was a fun surprise for us as a family. For context on where she's at competitively: in the 2024 school year she ranked 10th nationally in the 1000m for third-grade girls, so events like this Shinjuku race are a step up in scale, if not necessarily in distance.
Next up we'll look for more races at this kind of scale — they're good experience even when the distance itself is short. For now, here's the video of Uta's day at the Shinjuku City Half Marathon 2026.