The Monthly Milestone (February 2026)
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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 milestone 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
February Race/Event Results
Reading List (what I’m currently reading (including audiobooks))
Final Thoughts and Hopes for March
Substack Stats
I ended January with 739 subscribers and I am ending February with 736. I’ve been a little more active on Notes this year but so far the trajectory hasn’t really changed much. A little disappointing but I will keep chipping away.
Monthly Training Stats
Here are my training stats for February alongside the January stats for comparison:
February run total: 284.0 km (January: 353.0 km)
February walk total: 25.8 km (January: 13.5 km)
February run/walk total: 309.8 km (January: 366.5 km )
February elevation total: 2,491 m (January: 2,761 m)
I ended up doing a lot of trail running for the first few weeks of February but later in the month I started backing off as part of my marathon training block. The final week of the month had me doing 5K a day rather than at least 10K a day. I didn’t feel the need to go for a 300 km February. I think the quality was overall quite good, as you’ll see in the next section.
Race/Event results
I entered 4 parkruns (5 km races) during February:
February 7th: 19:37 6th overall (6th in age group) (Instagram pics here)
February 14th: 18:47. 3rd overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
February 21st: 19:12. 3rd overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
February 28th: 19:04. 3rd overall (2nd in age group)(Instagram pics here)
February was quite a productive parkrun month. I managed to run my first ever sub-19 minute 5K and also managed to get under 20 minutes on every parkrun in the month. I purchased some new shoes to get ready for the upcoming marathon but I didn’t wear them until the 14th. So some of this could be due to improvement, and some could be down to new shoes.
For beach running we had some pretty extreme difference in temperature. At the beginning of the month a snowstorm blew in and gave us some very interesting conditions to run in (cancelling the Saitama Marathon in the process).
Later on in the month it was much nicer.
Iaidō and karate were both business as usual.
Reading list
I finished one audiobooks ongoing in February:
The First Wall by Gav Thorpe
Siege of Terra: The Horus Heresy, Book 3. The first space port falls to the traitors but not all is lost. This book was very well written. I love it when your expectations are suddenly are flipped.
I had one ongoing audiobook in February:
Saturnine by Dan Abnett
Siege of Terra: The Horus Heresy, Book 4. Probably one of the best books in the series so far. A flaw in the defense of the palace becomes a trap. Very cool.
Final Thoughts and Hopes for March
My training in February ended up being not quite what I expected it to be. I will be running the Mt Fuji 100 (Kai) (70 km trail) in April, but before that I’m running the Shizuoka Marathon for the second time. I need more trail running to get ready for the Kai but it would also have been beneficial to do more specific road training for Shizuoka. I ended up focusing a lot on running predictable trails quicker, and then going all in on my parkruns. Looking at how quickly I ran my parkruns in February, I think the training may have paid off but I won’t know until I clear the marathon. Once that is done I’ll have more of a heavy trail focus with a lot of climbing.
From January this year I have also been doing a lot of strength training. I’ve gained about 2-3 kg of muscle. I don’t feel like I’m being weighed down so the additional muscle is likely helping me out. (I’ve been focusing a lot on core and leg strength).
I have a clear road map of my races coming up later in the year. After Shizuoka and the Kai, it’s Hida Takayama Ultramarathon (100 km) in June. So once Shizuoka is done it’s going to be climbing, strength training, and keeping my speed up at parkruns. Keeping it simple.
Shizuoka this weekend. All my focus is on that right now. Ganbarimasu! I’ll probably do a quick update on Notes first so watch this space for more details.
Thank you to all my readers
I hope you had a fantastic February and are ready to get after it during March.
Osu!
