うたぴょんスポーツNot every trip to a race means Uta is the one running. On November 23, 2025, we went down to Kanagawa for the S&B Chibikko Kenko Marathon, a kids' health marathon series held across Japan, and this time Uta was on the sidelines.
She went to cheer for a team-mate from her own club, Saitama RC, who was racing that day. Uta is 9 — born early in 2016, so she's one of the younger kids in her school year — and she's used to being the one in the starting line. Watching instead was a different kind of day for her.
How the day went
The Kanagawa venue for the S&B Chibikko Marathon was busy, the way these family-friendly races always are — lots of small kids, lots of parents with folding chairs and thermoses. Uta wasn't racing, so she spent the morning near the course with us, watching the younger age groups go off first and waiting for her team-mate's event.
When he went out, she was right at the rail. He ran a 2km race that day and came home in well under 7 minutes, which is a serious time for his age group — fast enough that people around us were talking about it after he crossed the line. Uta was loud about it too. She doesn't do quiet cheering; she was up on her toes yelling splits she'd half-guessed at.
It's worth saying Uta herself isn't new to fast times. She was ranked 10th nationally last year in the 1000m for third-grade girls, so she knows exactly what it feels like to be the one being cheered for. Being on the other side of it, for a full day, seemed to land differently with her — she kept comparing his pace to her own training splits the whole drive home.
No rain, no drama, just a long morning standing around a course in Kanagawa watching someone else chase a good time. Sometimes that's the whole report.
What a parent took away from it
I didn't expect a cheering day to teach me much, but it did. Watching Uta watch someone else race showed me how much of her own running identity is tied up in being the one competing. She wasn't bored on the sidelines — she was studying. She noticed his stride, his breathing near the end, how he didn't slow down on the last 200m.
That's a useful thing for a parent to see. We talk a lot about Uta's own splits and her own races, but she clearly learns just as much by watching someone else's. I didn't need to explain pacing strategy to her that day — she worked most of it out herself from the rail.
What I want to carry into her next block of training is this: let her watch more races she isn't in. Not as a reward, just as part of how she learns. I also want to be careful not to turn every cheering trip into a lecture about her own next race — she was genuinely happy for her team-mate, and that's worth protecting on its own.
One small practical note for other distance-running families: health-marathon series like S&B run heats by age and distance all day, so if you're there to support rather than race, check the schedule board early — the gap between heats can be long, and a 9-year-old on the sidelines gets cold fast in late November.
Next up for Uta is back to her own events, but I'm glad we had this one as a cheering trip instead. The video below has the finish and a bit of the crowd noise from that morning in Kanagawa.