うたぴょんスポーツWe ended 2025 with something a little different. Instead of a kids' race, Uta lined up in the general women's 5km division at the Saitama Stadium Marathon 2025 — meaning she was running against adult women, not other elementary school kids.
She's nine, born early in 2016, which in Japan's school calendar makes her one of the younger kids in her grade. As far as we know, no elementary school runner had done this race's adult women's field before her.
How the day went
The course at Saitama Stadium has a turnaround point near a spot called Tsuruya, and the 5km route has runners pass it six times — so Uta made that same turn six times over, watching the lead runners and the back of the pack go by again and again. It's a strange kind of course to run as a kid: short enough to see the same corner repeatedly, long enough that pacing actually matters.
She told me beforehand she was a bit nervous about running with grown women instead of kids her own age. Once the gun went off, though, she settled into it. Running in a loop course like that, she could see where she stood relative to the field each time she came back around, which seemed to help her keep her effort honest instead of going out too hard on the first lap.
By the finish she looked tired in the good way — the way she looks after a race where she gave it everything rather than coasted. It was her last race of 2025, and from what she said afterward, she was happy with how she closed the year out. Calling it a 'beautiful finish' might be generous from a dad, but for a nine-year-old running six turns of an adult 5km course, it felt like one.
What a parent took away from it
Putting a nine-year-old into a general women's division instead of a kids' category is a judgment call, and I won't pretend we didn't think about it. But Uta's spent this year building up — she was ranked 10th nationally among third-grade girls in the 1000m in 2024 — and running against adults felt like a logical next step for someone who's already racing at that level.
The big thing for me watching from the side was how she handled the repeated loop. A six-turn course exposes everything: if you go out too fast, you know it by lap three. Talking to her afterward, we didn't focus on where she finished relative to the adults. We talked about whether her effort felt even across the six laps, whether she had anything left in the final loop, and how it felt mentally to keep passing the same corner.
Going into 2026, that's where I want to put our attention — not chasing bigger fields or older competition for its own sake, but using races like this one to teach pacing and patience. A 5km loop course with six turns is as good a teacher as any coach I could hire.
That's the last race of the year in the books. We'll start 2026 with some easier distance work before building back toward races, and I'll keep posting as she goes.
The video above has the full race, including all six turns at Tsuruya.