The Monthly Milestone (March 2024) - New System From April

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I’ve been working on this Substack since August 2023. Since starting and including these milestone posts I’ve uploaded just over 50 articles. Thank you very much to the more than 500 people who have subscribed.

Articles are uploaded on Wednesdays at 17:00 JST with a monthly milestone post to give a few updates at the beginning of each month.

IMPORTANT! Subscriptions update (April 2024)

Since starting Substack I’ve done my best to keep pretty much everything on this page free so as many people as possible can read my articles.

I have a few people who very kindly decided to support my work with a paid subscriptions and to show my thanks I’ve been adding extra detail to these milestone posts just for them. This however does not seem like the smartest way to do this so I’m going to update the way this Substack works moving forward:

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From April 2024, whenever an article is released on Substack it will go to all of my subscribers (free and paid) by email. Regardless of whether you are free or paid you will receive my articles in your inbox.

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Moving forward, milestone posts will be fully available to all subscribers.

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Content improvement (removing annoying buttons)

In all of my articles I have been including buttons which link to my Buy me a Coffee and PayPal pages. This takes up space and I’m pretty sure no one wants to look at these. If people really want to support my work with a one off donation they can still find these links on the support my work page:

Moving forward I won’t be including these Buy me a coffee or PayPal buttons on my articles. This will hopefully improve the user experience.

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 April

Up until this point my monthly milestone posts have only been available to paid subscribers. Moving forward these will be open to all.

Substack Stats

I ended February with 495 subscribers and I am ending March with 530. Crossing the 500 subscriber mark has been a big milestone for this page. Thank you to everyone who decided to come along on this journey.

Monthly Training Stats

Here are my training stats for March alongside the February stats for comparison:

March run total: 301.0 km (Feb: 240.0 km)
March walk total: 58.7 km (Feb: 66.6 km)
March run/walk total: 359.7 km (Feb: 308.6 km)
March elevation total: 2632 m (Feb: 2056 m)

I was aiming to get a 300 km month for running and I managed to hit that goal. The walking and elevation were on target to Strava achievements but I will consider both of those bonuses.

There were no events other than regular training for both karate and iaidō. But I did attend one additional event which I will mention in the next section.

Race/Event results

I entered 5 parkruns (5 km races) during March.

• March 2nd : 21:51. 11th overall (1st in age group) (Instagram pics here)

• March 9th : 21:03. 8th overall (1st in age group) (Instagram pics here)

• March 16th : 20:32. 6th overall (1st in age group) (Instagram pics here)

• March 23rd : 20:52. 6th overall (1st in age group) (Instagram pics here)

• March 30th : 20:28. 7th overall (1st in age group) (Instagram pics here)

I’m not as fast as I have been but I’m pretty sturdy

March is a month where I wanted to increase my endurance and focus on strength rather than speed. My weight has gone up a bit so I am now just starting an attempted weight cut before my big event in April.

I had some decent results in the age group categories but, full disclosure, there are a lot of people who are older than me that are faster than me. I’m not simply being destroyed by college kids.

I attended one other event in March that came as a bit of a surprise towards the end of the month. Right now Soup from Freell Armoury is visiting Japan and staying with me. There is a historical medieval martial arts club (HEMA Japan) that meets up in Kinuta Park in Tokyo on a regular basis. On March 31st, Soup wanted to take some of his swords over for them to test and I was happy to get involved. There were a lot of people in the park due to cherry blossom season starting up, but it was nice to get a bit of HEMA style sword fighting done. I’m not very good because I’ve only done this twice, but because I was able to use a double handed Japanese style sword this time I was a bit more comfortable.

The chances of getting into a sword fight in the park are low…but never zero. (Me: Left. HEMA Japan Organizer Emery: Right)

Reading list

I finished three audiobooks in March:

• For the Emperor by Sandy Mitchell

• Caves of Ice by Sandy Mitchell

• The Traitor’s Hand by Sandy Mitchell

I’m clearly hooked on the Warhammer 40,000 Ciaphas Cain series. These books are much more light hearted than some of the other Warhammer 40,000 books. They focus on a commissar who keeps accidentally enhancing his heroic reputation by acting like a bit of a coward and everything working out.

For the Emperor is about a developing situation on a world occupied by humans and Tau. Caves of Ice is about an ork invasion on an ice world. The Traitor’s Hand is about a situation involving chaos on a world that is half desert, half ice.

All of these books are great.

March ongoing audiobooks:

• Ciaphas Cain: Death or Glory by Sandy Mitchell

This is the fourth book in the series and sees our hero, Ciaphas Cain isolated and stranded on a desert world surrounded by orks.

Final Thoughts and Hopes for April

I knew that March was going to be a bit of a slog when I started the month. As much as I enjoy doing parkruns, months when the only events I have are parkruns are not as interesting as ones where I have a big event.

Back in October I wrote an article titled Achievable vs audacious goals where I mentioned that I put in an entry for the Challenge Fuji 5 Lakes Ultramarathon. My race number recently arrived for that so this is going to be my main focus in April.

Race number and chips for the 34th Challenge Fuji 5 Lakes Ultramarathon

My longest run so far has been 70 km, and I’m entering the 118 km division of this ultramarathon. I know this is going to be a wild day but I’m really looking forward to it. I’m going to be tapering in April where I bring down my running volume over a few weeks rather than going to a dead stop. That should hopefully help with keeping up with my endurance while still giving me enough time to rest for the event.

Running very fast puts quite a strain on my body. But if I get into the zone and enjoy what I’m doing at a steady pace then I can run all day. At least in theory. I do completely acknowledge however that I’m basically going to run a distance PB, plus a marathon, plus a parkrun. This is going to be difficult even if I pace myself. But I’m going to go into this race with some inspirational thoughts from David Goggins.

“We can make any obstacle as big or small as we like. It’s all in the way we frame it. Going into Leadville, I expected one long, hard, motherfucking day. But how many inconsequential days had I lived by then? Why not spend one single day doing something I’ll be proud of for the rest of my life?”

―David Goggins (from his book, Never Finished)

I’m not quite at the 100 mile trail run event stage yet, but technically I’m not even at the 118 km road ultra stage yet. April is hopefully going to be the time I break down some barriers.

So I have three major things I hope to do in Apirl:

1. Spend the first few weeks of the month getting prepared and injury free

2. Complete my first 118 km ultra (or at least give it my best effort)

3. Come back to my readers with some great stories

頑張ります (Ganbarimasu: I’ll do my best).

Thank you

A special thanks to my readers for supporting me with this project. I hope that my posts are able to provide some level of inspiration for people.

I hope you had a fantastic March and are ready to get after it during April.

Osu!

Anthony