The Monthly Milestone (December 2024)
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Happy New Year Everyone!
It’s the first week back to normality after the Christmas/New Year break. I hope everyone is feeling refreshed and ready to get back at it.
As I mentioned in my previous milestone posts, 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 the New Year.
Substack Stats
I ended November with 718 subscribers and I am ending December with 734. I’m not quite sure what happened in December for the subscriber boost but hello to my new readers.
Monthly Training Stats
Here are my training stats for December alongside the November stats for comparison:
December run total: 214.7 km (November : 213.7 km)
December walk total: 105.3 km (November : 86.3 km)
December run/walk total: 320.0 km (November : 300.0 km)
December elevation total: 4,698 m (November : 5,554 m)
In December I needed to taper at the start of the month before a race I have been training for. I’ll give an update on that in the next section.
Since this is December I can see some totals for the year. These stats are just for running:
Activities: 400
Distance: 2,660.1 km
Time: 257h 18m
Elev Gain: 20,863 m
I get my stats from Strava but in 2025 they are changing the way stats are reported. This may impact my milestone posts moving forward but I’ll know more when I write the next one.
Race/Event results
I entered 4 parkruns (5 km races) during December.
December 7th: 36:22. 46th overall (4th in age group) (Instagram pics here)
December 14th: 22:50. 19th overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
December 21st: 22:20. 11th overall (4th in age group) (Instagram pics here)
December 28th: 22:24. 10th overall (2nd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
I had a non-competitive month when it came to parkrun. On the 7th I took the role of tail walker because I was entering an event on the 8th. The next two weeks had me running more slowly as part of recovery from the event (as much mental as physical), and on the final event of the year I ran a half marathon (arriving early an doing 3 parkruns before the official parkrun), then finishing off by running the actual parkrun and an additional lap. It’s nice to ease up a bit every so often.
The main event of December was the Izu Trail Journey. This was a 70 km trail run over the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka. I wrote a full race report on this which can be found below:
I missed a couple of the Enoshima Dash events due to schedule conflicts but I have been participating with these pretty much every week. The sea is still warm but the sand is getting incredibly cold to run on barefoot right now.
There were no karate specific events but I took part in a small local tournament for iaidō. I say “small and local” but it was a prefectural tournament. I was selected to be one of three representatives from my city. Six people would perform kata at the same time (3 from each team) and be judged simultaneously. My team won the first round but we we were beaten in the second round. This was my first experience with this kind of tournament so it was good to give it a try.
There were no specific karate events.
Reading list
I only “finished” 1 audiobook in December:
Finding Ultra by Rich Roll
I very rarely give up on audiobooks but I needed to stop with this one. Finding Ultra is the story of a man who at around 40 years old, turned his life around with diet and exercise and became a competitive ultra endurance athlete.
When I listened to Running Man by Chalie Engle I got an inspiring story of someone who struggles with addiction but also did some amazing things in his life. I was expecting a similar story in Finding Ultra, but it didn’t go the same way.
The first 5 hours of the book focused on the downward spiral of the author into alcoholism including injuring someone while driving under the influence. The police lost the paperwork for that offense, which the author described as “lucky.” This culminated in him going to rehab, then eventually going vegan and making some pretty wild claims (based on personal anecdotes and Netflix documentaries). I stopped listening to this because I felt like I was being preached to by someone who I had come to dislike after listening to him for 5 hours.
I had one audiobook ongoing in December
Corax by Gav Thorpe
I had almost finished this book during December. The book is a Warhammer 40k anthology about the Primarch Corvus Corax and his legion. Though this is an action, space drama based book there are some pretty heart wrenching stories in here. Especially the ones concerned with the Raptors and the struggles they go through.
Final Thoughts and Hopes for the New Year
The year 2024 was a good year. Although I didn’t run any full marathons, I got a new personal best for distance at the Challenge Fuji 5 Lakes Ultramarathon (article below), and also completed my first trail ultra.
A lot went on in 2024 and although it is tempting to do a breakdown all of what went on in a post, breaking it down into granular detail is not necessary. My new years resolutions for the past few years have simply been to keep doing what I’m doing. If I end up in a rut and need an excuse to start up again I may use changing of the year to do that*, but since I’ve already got races in the calendar and a full training schedule I’m all good.
*Note: I started running in August a few years ago. There’s no need to wait until a specific time milestone to change. If you want to change, you can start today.
Speaking of races, I currently have three races in my schedule: The Shonan Fujisawa City Marathon (half marathon) in January, the Shizuoka Marathon (full marathon) in March, and the Nobeyama Nobeyama Ultramarathon (100 km) in May. This will be my third time to run the Shonan Fujisawa City Marathon and I know, due to the nature of the course, that it is not optimal for setting records on, so I plan to treat this as a fun run and training for the Shizuoka Marathon. Then once that marathon distance is done, I’ll be back to ultra training mode with lots of hill climbing.
In 2025 I have no specific plans for iaidō. This is simply going to be another year of training and improvment. I may enter some tournaments as they come along but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
For karate, I may have eligibility to attempt my next grading test, but I need to improve my technique a bit more first. Again, if I have the opportunity to do something I’ll go ahead, but I have no specific plans right now.
So, all in all, my plan is to simply stay on the grind. Some changes may happen to my Substack in the future but right now the plan is to pick everything back up after the short break and stay on the grind.
Thank you to all my readers
Whether you make a resolution or not, I wish all of my readers success in their endeavors.
I hope you had a fantastic 2024 and are ready to get after it during 2025.
Osu!
Anthony