The Monthly Milestone (March 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
March Race/Event Results
Reading List (what I’m currently reading (including audiobooks))
Final Thoughts and Hopes for April
Substack Stats
I ended February with 736 subscribers and I am ending March with…736. It seems like there have been some new followers in addition to some old followers dropping off. Revolving door month. Welcome to my new subscribers.
Monthly Training Stats
Here are my training stats for March alongside the February stats for comparison:
March run total: 302.0 km (February: 284.0 km )
March walk total: 18.7 km (February: 25.8 km)
March run/walk total: 320.7 km (February: 309.8 km)
March elevation total: 3,173 m (February: 2,491 m)
I have been focusing a lot on trail running this month. I wasn’t just brute forcing volume. The climbing results were decent so I’ll take that. More trail running next month!
Race/Event results
I entered 4 parkruns (5 km races) during February:
March 7th: 35:20. Tail walker. (Instagram pics here)
March 14th: 19:18. 3rd overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
March 21st: 19:01. 6th overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
March 28th: 19:23. 7th overall (2nd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
On the first week of March I took a tailwalker position at parkrun due to having a race the next day. Every other run I took seriously and I have been continuing to stack up sub-20 5Ks every week. Good results this year.
Speaking of races, on March 8th I ran the Shizuoka marathon for the second time. I didn’t quite get under 3 hours but it was my fastest marathon to date. Fantastic result. Full report below.
Beach running has been getting nicer and nicer. The weather conditions are great recently so running barefoot is very comfortable again.
Iaidō and karate were both business as usual.
Reading list
I finished two audiobooks ongoing in March:
Saturnine by Dan Abnett
Siege of Terra: The Horus Heresy, Book 4. Amazing book. The siege is well under way now. This book follows the story of the assault on the Saturnine gate. A lot of stories are ended here. Very cool.
Mortis by John French
Siege of Terra: The Horus Heresy, Book 5. There was quite a major focus on following Ollanius Persson and his crew in this book but this was at the same time that major titan engagements started happening and getting closer to the wall. I’m really looking forward to continuing the story but I’m going to take a little break for a while.
I had one ongoing audiobook in March:
Gun Samurai by Matt Okuhara
I have been communicating with the author of this book. Matt is a very interesting person. This book is part history and part biography, focusing on his service with the Matsumoto Castle Gun Corps. I have not finished the book yet but I am very invested in learning more.
Matt also has a YouTube channel. I’ll share a short video here:
Final Thoughts and Hopes for April
The majority of my training in March focused on trail running. This is all for the upcoming Mt Fuji 100 (Kai) (70 km trail) in April. I’m feeling a lot stronger thanks to all the trail running and this seems to be translating to strength in regular running as well. Seven out of the past eight parkruns were under 20 minutes (one of those runs I was a tail walker so it shouldn’t count, meaning I’m 7/7 on serious runs). This seems to represent an overall improvement in my running performance. I’m guessing this will start failing when it warms up but I’ll try to hang on as long as I can.
April is going to again focus on trail running. I need to keep climbing and doing so carrying the equipment I’m going to need on the run. Leg strength and overall endurance is the name of the game.
My next race after the Kai is the Hida Takayama Ultramarathon (100 km) in June. That is road based so once this trail running block is over I’ll be back to flatter roads and building volume there.
The Shizuoka marathon in March was a great result. I still have room to improve but I’m getting stronger all the time. If possible I would like to run a sub-3 hour marathon this year, but this will probably be something I attempt in the Autumn/Winter season. Still need to figure out which marathon challenge it at.
I’ve not put an entry in at Shonan yet but it is likely I will be running this one in December. I kind of feel obliged to. Here is the promo video for the Shonan International Marathon this year.
Thank you to all my readers
I hope you had a fantastic Marach and are ready to get after it during April.
Osu!
