The Monthly Milestone (April 2025)
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Greetings to My Readers
I started my Substack in August 2023. Where possible I am still going to try to upload weekly in 2025 on Wednesdays at 17:00 JST. These posts serve as update posts to keep myself accountable with my training and to also give an update to those who are following me.
Milestones will stay up but for the rest of my articles they will generally be archived after one month. After they are archived they will be accessible to my paid subscribers. Free subscribers can read everything I post for free as it comes out.
This month…
In this Monthly Milestone I’m going to be covering the following:
Substack Stats
Monthly Training Stats
Race/Event Results
Reading List (what I’m currently reading (including audiobooks))
Final Thoughts and Hopes for May
Substack Stats
I ended March with 747 subscribers and I am ending April with…747 followers! No change at all in the numbers. There have been some ups and some downs but ultimately I ended up with the same number of subscribers at the end of April.
Monthly Training Stats
Here are my training stats for April alongside the March stats for comparison:
April run total: 358.4 km (March : 330.4 km)
April walk total: 32.9 km (March : 48.7 km)
April run/walk total: 391.3 km (March : 379.2 km)
April elevation total: 3,893 m (March : 2,130 m)
In April I spent a bit of time tapering, had a big race, and a bit of recovery time. This was quite a big month in terms of running and climbing but a big chunk of this was done in a single day. In the months leading up to this I was being pretty consistent with running 10 km a day but in this month it was a series of extremes, with one 170 km week and one 35 km week.
Race/Event results
I entered 2 parkruns (5 km races) during March:
April 5th: 20:02. 7th overall (2nd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
April 19th: 21:08. 15th overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
In April I didn’t have many chances to take part in parkrun events. I was reasonably quick on my first parkrun and was recovering on my second one. Tsujido Kaihin Koen also celebrated it’s 200th event this month, so there was quite a good turnout on that day.
In terms of other races in April, I completed my longest run ever by running 100 miles from Hibiya Park in Tokyo to Numazu in Shizuoka. It was a brutal event full of climbs, rain, fog, and some hallucinations. I wrote a full race report on this and linked it here in case you missed it:
The weather is getting nice again now so the Enoshima Dash events on Sunday mornings are much more pleasant. Barefoot running on the beach is always a highlight of the week. I’ve had the opportunity to lead the events a few times recently. Keeping the rest periods controlled gives everyone a good workout.
There were no special events for karate or iaidō this month. I’ve just been focusing on regular training.
Reading list
I finished 1 audiobook in April:
Under the Breaking Sky: Blind Rage by Nick Clausen
I started listening to the “Under the Breaking Sky” series in March and finished the first book in April. This story is a zombie like horror story but with the twist that there is a “crack” that appears in the sky occasionally and turns people into mindless, blind killers. The first book introduced the main characters and focused on the first few times the crack appeared.
I had one audiobook ongoing in April:
Under the Breaking Sky: Blind Fury by Nick Clausen
The second book in the Under the Breaking Sky series is much the same as the first. More characters are being introduced (as some of the previous ones are killed off) and the story is progressing with more people immune to the “crack” in the sky are appearing. I’m still not through with this book yet but the story has really sucked me in.
Final Thoughts and Hopes for May
April was a month of change. Once you cross certain lines there is no going back. I started off April as a someone who has completed a 100 km ultra, and I ended April as someone who has completed a 100 mile ultra. I’m not sure if this term is used elsewhere but in the runner circles I hang around with people who have completed 100 mile runs are referred to as “milers.”
The race was a few weeks ago now and I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on things. And on reflection, I don’t feel that different.
When we have a goal there is a tendency to think that our lives will be better once we’ve achieved that goal. And while it’s true that achieving things will improve your life to a level, there is no ‘happily ever after’ when it comes to these kinds of goals. There is no finish line. There’s just, “What’s next?”
I’ve been running for less than 5 years and I’ve already achieved more than I imagined when I started running. There will probably be a new frontier that I want to explore in the near future but the next big race for me is going to be the Nobeyama Ultramarathon (100 km). This ultra is comparatively shorter than the Yagurazawa Ōkan but the time is much stricter (I have 14 hours to run 100 km).
Although it isn’t my first time to run 100 km, every one of these is a new experience. Because I have experience running 100 km I am hoping that I will be a bit more prepared for this experience and can make it to the end with a bit more time to spare and a bit more of a spring in my step than my previous experiences.
Nobeyama will be my last big race of the season. In July I am going to take part in a fun run called the 人間塩出し昆布マラソン (Human Salted Seaweed Marathon), which is a 10 km running event where the winner is decided by the amount of weight they lose during the run. It is set on one of the hottest days of the year so people are going to be sweating a lot. (Please note that I am not aiming to win. It’s the taking part that counts). The next I have booked is the Shonan International Marathon in December (this will be my 3rd time running this event). I ended up missing last year’s event due to running another event, but this year is the 20th marathon so I’d like to take part.
Since I have Nobeyama to focus on this month I’m going to just focus all of my attention on that. As soon as that is done I’m planning to recover a bit then try and get back into the rhythm of consistently running 10 km a day.
Running activities aside, I’m trying to post a bit more on Substack outside of my articles. I’m enjoying posting these mini updates and I hope they are of interest to my followers as well.
Thank you to all my readers
I hope you had a fantastic March and are ready to get after it during May.
Osu!
Anthony