うたぴょんスポーツFirst race of the year. On January 4, 2026 we went to the Kagamiishi NY Ekiden, a New Year's road relay in Kagamiishi, a town in Fukushima, north of Tokyo. An ekiden is a relay where team-mates hand off a sash instead of a baton, and the whole town usually turns out to watch.
Uta is 9, born early in 2016, and running in fourth grade this year. She was entered in the upper-grade division, which in Japan usually means she was racing against kids a year or two older than her.
How the day went
It was the kind of cold, clear New Year's morning you get a lot of in Japan in early January. Everyone was bundled up at the start line, breath showing, stretching to stay warm. Uta looked excited rather than nervous — this is a race she's done before, and there's a familiar buzz to it, team tents, other families, kids comparing bib numbers.
She told us she felt good going in. No complaints about her legs, no worries voiced out loud. That matters more than it sounds like, because the days she's quiet before a race are usually the days something is bothering her.
The race itself
The video is built around a point-of-view camera, so you see the race through Uta's eyes starting around the 6-minute mark, after the opening. It's a different way to watch a relay than standing on the sideline — you get the pack forming, the sound of other kids' footsteps, the moment the sash gets handed off.
Then at 7:22 there's what the title calls 'the moment of trouble' — something went wrong for Uta mid-race. We won't pretend to know more than the footage shows, but it was clearly a tough stretch for her, not a clean run. What stood out watching it back is that she kept moving. She didn't stop.
What a parent took away from it
You prepare a kid for a race by getting the training right, but you can't train for everything that happens on the course on the day. A stumble, a bad step, a moment where things don't go to plan — that's not something a warm-up fixes.
What I try to say to her afterward isn't about the mistake. It's that she kept going. In an ekiden especially, stopping doesn't just cost you, it costs the team-mates who are waiting for that sash. Uta understands that already, which is partly why she didn't quit even when the moment clearly rattled her.
The next thing to work on isn't pace or form. It's the mental side — how to reset quickly after something unexpected happens mid-race, rather than carrying it for the rest of the course.
Anything left over that matters
She's currently ranked 10th nationally among third-grade girls over 1000m, from the 2024 school year — a number that has nothing to do with this race, but it's part of why she gets entered in the older division and still holds her own.
There was also a short clip of her on a TV news segment (Nstar) around this time, standing next to another young runner, which the family found more amusing than anything else.
Next up for Uta is more winter training before the spring race season picks up. The 'moment of trouble' at 7:22 is worth watching if you want to see how a 9-year-old handles something going wrong in real time — she doesn't make it look easy, but she doesn't fold either.