うたぴょんスポーツOn March 8th, Uta ran the second leg of the Kazo Fuji-no-sato Ekiden 2026, an ekiden (a road relay where team-mates pass a sash) held in Kazo, a city in Saitama, north of Tokyo.
She was part of a mixed 4th-grade 'dream team' pulled together for the day. We strapped a point-of-view camera on her for this one, so the video is literally her view of the course.
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How the day went
It was a straightforward morning — no drama beforehand, just the usual pre-race nerves. Uta is nine, born early in 2016, so she's in the younger half of her school year, and she was running as part of a 4th-grade team put together just for this ekiden. She'd trained for this leg specifically, knowing she'd be the one handing off next, which always adds a different kind of pressure than running the opener.
Wearing the head camera took a bit of getting used to. She said it felt strange at first but forgot about it once she started running. Weather and course conditions weren't a big talking point in her own account — she was focused on the sash and the runner ahead of her.
The race itself
Uta ran the second leg, which meant she took the sash mid-pack and had to work out quickly who she needed to chase. The video title says it straight: she pushed the team 'into podium contention' with this leg. That's the headline result — not a personal best or a specific time, but a leg that moved the team up into award position by the time she handed off.
Watching the footage back, you can see her picking off the gap in front of her steadily rather than all at once. It's not a sprint-everything approach; she settles into a pace and grinds the gap down. For a 4th-grade leg in an ekiden, that's exactly the kind of running that actually works — patient, then decisive near the handoff.
What a parent took away from it
Running a middle leg in an ekiden is a different skill from running leg one or the anchor. You don't get the gun to tell you where you stand — you have to read the gap in front of you and decide, in real time, whether to close it now or save something for later. Uta handled that better than I expected for her age.
What I told her afterward wasn't about the result. It was that she trusted her own pace instead of panicking and sprinting the whole leg. That's the habit I want to reinforce — not just for ekidens, but for the 1000m she races individually too. She's currently ranked 10th nationally among 3rd-grade girls over 1000m from last year, so pacing discipline matters more as she moves up.
Next for us is just more of the same: short track efforts midweek, longer easy runs on the weekend, and talking through race tactics before we even get to the start line, not after.
We'll keep posting her races as they come — the Strava data and training notes go up separately if you want the detail behind the results.
This video is her leg 2, camera-view, full run from handoff to handoff.
