The Monthly Milestone (July 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 August
Substack Stats
I ended June with 736 subscribers and I am ending July with 735. Not much change there. Thank you for everyone for sticking around. Keep being awesome.
Monthly Training Stats
Here are my training stats for July alongside the June stats for comparison:
July run total: 342.0 km (June : 301.4 km)
July walk total: 8.0 km (June : 5.6 km)
July run/walk total: 350.0 km (June : 307.0 km)
July elevation total: 2,129 m (June : 1,232 m)
It’s getting hotter and hotter so July is rough. I managed to get the distance complete early but my elevation was still not great as I was getting towards the end of the month. In the last week of July I went for a trip and was staying on a mountain. I took the opportunity to get some climbing done over two days and managed to grind out all of the remaining climbing over two days.
August is going to be another hot one. Running events in August are very few and far between but I’ll make sure to get my training done.
Race/Event results
I entered 4 parkruns (5 km races) during July:
July 5th: 20:56. 6th overall (5th in age group) (Instagram pics here)
July 12th: 20:07. 8th overall (4th in age group) (Instagram pics here)
July 19th: 21:30. 7th overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
July 26th: 25:07. 37th overall (5th in age group) (Instagram pics here)
July 19th
I was at parkrun every week this month but not all of them were normal parkruns. Based on the limitation of time (running opportunity) I ran a half marathon on July 19th with the official parkrun being kilometers 15-20. My cool down was an additional lap around the park. On the 26th I entered another event right after the parkrun so I chose to run a little slower.
Speaking of which, I will write a report about this in the coming weeks but on July 26th I entered the 人間塩出し昆布マラソン (The Human Salted Seaweed Marathon). This event was a 10 km run down the coast with the objective to lose as much weight as possible. I don’t know what place I got yet, but it was a hot day and I know that I lost 3.5 kg during the 10 km run.
Beach sprinting is still taking place every week. They still continue to be one of the highlights of my weekend. I’ve had a few injuries on my feet recently (mostly cuts and abrasions) so I haven’t been able to run barefoot as quickly as I would like. But I’m still showing up with taped toes and having a lot of fun sprinting up and down the sand.
Karate has been mostly business as usual but for one lesson where we had several visitors from Austria that wanted to give karate a try. I was acting as a translator for the most part here. Good times. No one got hurt (too badly).
There were no special iaidō events this month. Just regular training. I have a tournament coming up in August so I’ve been focusing on getting ready for that.
Reading list
I finished one audiobook in July:
Old Earth by Nick Kyme
Book 47 of the Horus Heresy series. This book had a big focus on Vulkan and the Salamanders finding their way back to Terra. A huge section of the story was also dedicated to the Iron Hands campaign against the Sons of Horus…but that didn’t end on a good note. :(
I had one audiobook ongoing in July:
The Burden of Loyalty by Dan Abnett, John French, L J Goulding, Rob Sanders, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Chris Wraight, David Annandale, and Gav Thorpe
By the end of July I was just about finished with this one. This is book 48 of the Horus Heresy series. This is an anthology book (as you might recognize from the absurd number of authors). The main focus of this book is about some of the conflicts going on around Mars. There’s a big section devoted to the Space Wolves for some reason (it seemed a bit out of place), but I am enjoying the stories.
Final Thoughts and Hopes for August
It has been getting hotter and hotter leading up to August but we are probably at the peak of it now. Parkrun aside, there are not really any running events going on so it’s just going to be a matter of pushing on with training until September. I have no events lined up in September, but I’m expecting it to start getting cooler then, so hopefully my speed will once again start increasing.
Just as a reminder, there are 3 races I’d like to enter in 2026. I’ll be putting my name down for them as soon as I’m able to so I’ll leave a reminder for myself (and anyone reading this blog in case they would also like to enter these events):
Tokyo Marathon (Full Marathon): March 2026 (General entry from August 15th)
Mt Fuji 100 (Kai) (70 km trail): April 2026 (Entry in November)
Hida Takayama Ultramarathon (100 km): June 2026 (Entry in November)
In addition to this, I already signed up for the Shonan Fujisawa City Marathon. This is actually a half marathon in January 2026. This time will be the 4th time I entered this.
In mid-August I will be entering the Kanagawa Prefecture Iaidō tournament. I tend to enter this tournament just to gain experience and show my face. Whenever I enter these tournaments I tend to go in with the, “Accept everything just the way it is,” attitude from Miyamoto Musashi. It’s not possible to try hard and do better on the day. All I can do is show the result of my training. If I do well, great. If I don’t, no problem.
I have a bit of time off in August. On days where the weather is not so hot you can hear the air burning I might venture out to enjoy the beach a bit. Sunny weather is nice but I kind of wish it was less hostile to human life. Still, there’s always a way to enjoy life regardless of the weather. I’ll continue to get up early and run then just take the rest of the days as they come.
Have a great summer!
頑張りましょう! (Ganbarimashō!)
Thank you to all my readers
I hope you had a fantastic July and are ready to get after it during August.
Osu!
Anthony