The Monthly Milestone (October 2024)
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Greetings to My Readers
Things are still going strong since I started my Substack in August 2023. I’m still doing my best to upload articles weekly. For those who are new to my newsletter, I upload a very formulaic post once a month (this one), followed by other more creative articles for the rest of the month. This one is mainly to give an update on what has been going on and to keep myself accountable with my training (both to myself and my readers).
Articles are uploaded on Wednesdays at 17:00 JST. Monthly milestones will be updated on the first Wednesday of the following month, meaning there will be one milestone and three or four regular articles per month.
I recently made an update to keep articles online for one month. After that they will go into an archive that can be freely accessed by my paid subscribers.
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 November
Substack Stats
I ended September with 701 subscribers and I am ending October with 705. My subscribers are going up and down a little bit recently. My subscriber number seems to have stabilized now. Hopefully it will start going up again in the future. My readers can help out with this by sharing articles they enjoyed on social media. No pressure for that one but spreading the word is the best way you can help with this.
Monthly Training Stats
Here are my training stats for October alongside the September stats for comparison:
October run total: 191.8 km (September : 183.4 km)
October walk total: 89.2. km (September : 75.3 km)
October run/walk total: 281.0 km (September : 258.7 km)
October elevation total: 2,390 m (September : 2,021 m)
Last month I said I’ve been focusing more on the quality of my runs than the distance. My next race is the Izu Trail Journey so I’ve been trying to get as many trail runs in as possible. Trail running is always a bit more time consuming than just running on a road, both due to the terrain and due to the fact I need to physically go to a trail to get it done.
With all that said, I managed to get more work done in all areas in October compared to September. I’m thankful that it’s finally getting a bit cooler.
Race/Event results
I entered 2 parkruns (5 km races) during October.
October 12th: 20:14. 19th overall (3rd in age group) (Instagram pics here)
October 19th: 20:08. 6th overall (1st in age group) (Instagram pics here)
I wasn’t able to attend too many parkrun events in October. The one on the first week was canceled and I was busy on the 26th, so only two parkruns this month. Although my time is starting to come down a bit with the cooler weather, I got absolutely demolished on October 12th, coming in 19th place with a time of 20:14. The turnout on that day was great and there were some very high level runners taking part. I learned a lot during that run so I’m happy to be demolished. (I also got a free parkrun hat on that day as well…which explains the good turnout).
The Enoshima Dash events are still going strong. I took part in 4 dash events in October and even had an opportunity to lead one of the events.
The Yokohama Marathon was held on October 27th. Many people went to join that event or support the runners who took part. In the absence of our leader, Sakamoto San (and director Fujita San), I took the initiative and led the charge as a temporary director. Now I know I can do this I’ll be more than happy to torture people with this running session if they decided to come visit and want a hard training session that doesn’t fall on a Sunday.
Speaking of Sakamoto San, he got a very good result at the Yokohama marathon, coming in 3rd place with a net time of 2:26:11. Congratulations, Sakamoto San!
1st Place (Fujihara): 2:21:11
2nd Place (Kuroda): 2:25:58
3rd Place (Sakamoto): 2:26:11
I took part in karate and iaidō as much as I could over the month but there were no specific events.
Reading list
I only finished 1 audiobook in October:
Ciaphas Cain: The Anthology by Sandy Mitchell
I’ve been really enjoying the Ciaphas Cain series, but unfortunately it is just about coming to a close. This book is a collection of short stories about Cain and his adventures in the 40K universe. I quite enjoyed this short story format and I hope they do more of these.
Ongoing audiobook:
Vainglorious by Sandy Mitchell
This is the last book (so far) in the Ciaphas Cain series. I had just about finished this in October and and I’ll be starting some totally new books in November. This book focuses on the time when Cain was about to go into retirement as a teacher at the Schola Progenium on Perlia. On the way to his retirement he is requested to investigate some strange goings on at a forge world that is not meeting its shipment quota. Which of course is more complicated and dangerous than he expected.
Final Thoughts and Hopes for November
It’s finally cool! Training is much more pleasant in this weather. The spiders in the forest also seem to be less active these days so I’m collecting fewer and fewer spider webs as my trail running volume increases.
It was my birthday in October. I completed my 99th parkrun in the 35-39 age category and my 100th parkrun is my first parkrun in the 40-44 category. In general I think my global ranking times will go up a little but at my local parkrun there are a lot of very fast guys in the 40-44 age category so somehow “leveling up” is making things a little more difficult. Anyway, I like a challenge.
At the beginning of October I signed up for the Shizuoka Marathon. Other running events (both longer and shorter) aside, this is my next full marathon. This year I’ve run a few ultras but I haven’t run a marathon in 2024, so taking a swing at Shizukoka is going to be my next attempt at improving my marathon PB time. This event is on March 9th, 2025.
Entrance to the Nobeyama Ultramarathon opens this month. That event will be held on May 18th, 2025. I haven’t fully decided what I’m doing in 2025 yet but this is likely going to be one of the big races I enter.
October was a pretty good month for training but I can’t let up during November. As I mentioned earlier, I’ll be running the Izu Trail Journey on December 8th. This course is roughly 70km and contains a lot of climbing.
There’s a trail near my place that mimics the average amount of climbing that will be done on the ITJ course so I have been trying to run that more and more recently. But it looks like during this race there will be a lot of intense climbing followed by intense descending. This is definitely going to be a challenge, but I’m very much looking forward to it.
So for November it’s going to be steady away with training. The beginning of December is going to lead into a taper before Izu so November is very much going to be a month of preparation…and possibly researching forest and mountain deities to pray to for my survival.
Thank you to all my readers
I hope you had a fantastic October and are ready to get after it during November.
Osu!
Anthony