Greetings to My Readers
We are already one month into 2025! Time flies when you are having fun.
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 February
Substack Stats
I ended December with 734 subscribers and I am ending January with 735. Not much change there. I’ll take that.
Monthly Training Stats
Here are my training stats for January alongside the December stats for comparison:
January run total: 331.2 km (December : 214.7 km)
January walk total: 71.0 km (December : 105.3 km)
January run/walk total: 402.2 km (December : 320.0 km)
January elevation total: 2,039 m (December : 4,698 m)
In 2025 I am increasing my running volume due to some upcoming events. My elevation training has dropped quite a lot but my running distance is much further than in December.
I ran a marathon on New Year’s Day to bring in the year and after a short rest I got locked in to running 10 km a day (on average). I started waking up early every day to get 10 km in before the world really starts. This has been a big improvement.
Race/Event results
I entered 4 parkruns (5 km races) during December.
January 4th: 20:32. 7th overall (2nd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
January 11th: 20:34. 11th overall (4th in age group) (Instagram pics here)
January 18th: 20:21. 4th overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
January 25th: 22:24. Tail walker (Instagram pics here)
I have been doing my best to try to keep my pace as even as possible at most of the parkrun events. The main purpose of this is to try to train a comfortable marathon pace for my next event (a regular marathon) in March.
As usual I have been attending the Enoshima Dash events on Sundays. On one of the events in January a friend of mine brought a pitbull to the event and attached it to me to give me a “speed boost.” I think that’s the first time ever I’ve ran at 2:36/km.
I also had a race in January. I ran my first half-marathon on January 26th and managed to crush my all of my personal bests from 10k to half marathon. Great result. See the full article below in case you missed it.
Karate and iaidō are now also back in full swing. No special events but it’s good to be back at the dōjō.
Reading list
I only “finished” 2 audiobooks in January:
Corax by Gav Thorpe
This book was a Warhammer 40K anthology series focusing on the Raven Guard. I was almost done with it at the end of the year and picked it up again after a bit of a hiatus on the Horus Heresy series. I really enjoyed the book but the book ends on a bit of a dark note. I finished this on January 1st while running a marathon. When you are more than 30km into a run sad endings hit you harder.
Master of Mankind by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
This book was great. Another Warhammer 40K Horus Heresy novel. This one gave a lot of really deep insight into the story and gave a lot more background on the Emperor of Mankind. I think people who say, “Magnus did nothing wrong,” probably haven’t got to this book yet. Or maybe I’m wrong and more will be revealed later.
I had one audiobook ongoing in December
Garro by James Swallow
I’m really pushing on with the Horus Heresy series. This one is book 42. This story focuses on Battle-Captain Garro and his work as an agent for Malcador the Sigillite. Again, really enjoying this one. Especially the part where Garro gives somebody what he thinks is a “light punch.”
Final Thoughts and Hopes for February
A 300km running month is a great start to the year. Not only that but my parkrun times have been good (very steady) and personal bests in my first half-marathon were also better than I ever expected. I have no races planned in February so it’s just going to be a solid training month.
My next races are the Shizuoka Marathon (full marathon) in March, and the Nobeyama Nobeyama Ultramarathon (100 km) in May. In addition to my two races I’ve also put my name down for another even in April. This one is a 100 MILE journey run. I will give more details about this when it’s closer to the event but this is probably my stupidest running event to date.
With that in mind I’ll be keeping my milage up in February.
I have a karate cross training event in February as well. My primary focus there is going to be to try not to get too injured. Some of the guys that are pretty tough (I’ve had bones cracked by them before), so I’ll do my best to ‘keep it light.’
Thank you to all my readers
I hope you had a fantastic January and are ready to get after it during February.
Osu!
Anthony