うたぴょんスポーツOn January 12, 2026, Uta ran in the Fuji-san GX Chibikko Ekiden, a kids' ekiden (a relay where team-mates pass a sash, or tasuki, instead of a baton) held near Mt Fuji. She's 9 years old, in fourth grade this school year.
What made this one different was the team. The first and second legs were run by two third-graders who are normally Uta's rivals on the track. The third and fourth legs, including Uta, were run by fourth-graders who are also usually competing against each other. For one day, they were all on the same team.
How the day went
The whole point of the event was mixing up rivals into one team, so there was a strange energy before the start. Uta knew the girls she was running with well, just not as team-mates. Ekiden days always carry extra pressure compared to a normal track race, because one runner's mistake affects everyone holding the sash after them.
The tasuki itself was a big deal this time. In this ekiden, if you're not wearing the sash properly, you're disqualified. That's not a small rule to keep in the back of your mind while you're also racing as hard as you can.
The race itself
The third-grade rivals ran legs one and two, the fourth-grade rivals ran legs three and four, Uta among them. Each hand-off meant trusting someone she's used to chasing, not working with. The title calls it 'despair-inducing' for a reason — with the sash rule hanging over every leg, a fumbled hand-off could end the team's race on the spot, no matter how fast anyone had run.
The drama came from exactly that tension: girls who are normally trying to beat each other instead had to carry each other's effort down the course, sash intact, all the way to the finish.
What a parent took away from it
Watching your child compete against the same girls race after race, you start to think of them as fixed opponents. This ekiden flipped that. Uta had to root for a rival mid-race, and depend on one too, which is a different kind of pressure than just running fast.
The sash rule was a good reminder for us at home — we talk a lot about pace and effort, but almost never about something as simple as 'is it on properly.' That's worth practicing too, not just running.
Going forward, I want to talk with Uta less about the race result and more about the hand-offs themselves: did she trust her team-mate, did she communicate clearly in the exchange zone. Those are skills a stopwatch doesn't show.
Uta's got more races on the calendar this winter, and I'll keep posting the ones that have something worth writing about beyond just a finish time.
The video above has the full hand-offs, rivals and all.