The Monthly Milestone (October 2025)

Thank you for subscribing!

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 November

Substack Stats

I ended September with 729 subscribers and I am ending October with 734. It’s great to see a few more people on board. It’s also great to see some more engagement from my new subscribers. Thank you very much for the likes, comments, and restacks.

Monthly Training Stats

Here are my training stats for October alongside the September stats for comparison:

October run total: 310.0 km (September: 308.4 km)
October walk total: 17.2 km (September: 22.1 km)
October run/walk total: 327.2 km (September: 330.5 km)
October elevation total: 1,476 m (September: 1,201 m)

Things were going pretty well in October for the most part until the last week of the month. During the last week I got struck down with some kind of bug and was running a high fever for a few days (not COVID, not flu. I had a test). I was hoping to get a few more kilometers in but unfortunately that wasn’t meant to be.

I mentioned last month that I was getting into using my single toothed geta. I am now at the point where I can comfortably run around in these (as long as the surfaces I am running on are relatively smooth). I have fallen a few times wearing these though, and I want to try to avoid injury, so I will take it slow and improve over time.

Race/Event results

I entered 2 parkruns (5 km races) during October:

• October 11th: 20:27 . 14th overall (5th in age group) (Instagram pics here)

• October 18th: 19:43. 3rd overall (2nd in age group) (Instagram pics here)

  

  Pacer in action

There were quite a few parkrun cancellations in October. On the first available event I acted as a pacer (a runner was aiming for about 21 minutes. Got him under 20:30). The other event I arrived at the park early to test out my geta and after changing shoes a few times I managed to get a pretty decent time on the parkrun with normal shoes.

In other news the Smile Endurance Relay Marathon in Ebina Undō Koen (スマイル耐久リレーマラソンin海老名運動公園) on 4 Oct 2025 was a great success. I got a few PBs on that day. I wrote a full report on that which I will link below for those who missed it.

I attended as many sprints as I could. It was largely business as usual apart from the final week of October when the Yokohama marathon was held. I ended up being the leader of that week. A lot of my friends did great at the Yokohama marathon. I was kind of sad to miss that marathon but I’m looking forward to running with those friends in December at Shonan.

Small turnout on marathon day. (Plus a crow)

Also, I’ve been traveling a bit recently. I like to explore areas that I go to by getting up early and running around town. Osaka Castle has a great running course around it.

Osaka castle

I also found an interesting shrine while running in Ishikawa.

Tunnel of omikuji in Ishikawa

It was business as usual at my karate and iaidō dōjō. No special events to report.

Reading list

I finished two audiobooks in October:

• Heralds of the Siege by Guy Haley, Nick Kyme, Anthony Reynolds, Rob Sanders, James Swallow, Gav Thorpe, and Chris Wraight

This was an anthology that focused on preparations for the upcoming siege. The stories were ok but nothing particularly outstanding. I remember one story where the Imperial Fists ended up doing some crowd control on ordinary citizens…that was pretty overkill. Otherwise, it was a pretty forgettable book.

I had one audiobook ongoing in October:

• Titandeath by Guy Haley

Book 53 of the Horus Heresy series. Only one book left after this. Then it’s the Siege of Terra series. This book is very much focused on loyalist and traitor legions fighting at Beta-Garmon before the final battle. A lot of themes are explored in this book that aren’t explored in the other books (in particular the center of the plot is a titan legion made up of mostly women). Not what I was expecting but so far so good.

Final Thoughts and Hopes for November

October was a decent training month, but I ended up being a little disappointed with the results by the end of the month. I normally like to try to get a half-marathon in during the month, but I simply wasn’t able to schedule one in. Unfortunate, but I was still overall on target. My cold really knocked me back at the end of the month.

My injuries left over from September are still not fully healed but they are not slowing me down very much. Seiza is still a little uncomfortable, but I am managing.

I’m still way ahead of where I need to be to get to my 3,650 km goal, but there are a lot of schedule disruptions coming up in November so I definitely should not be complacent. I’m actually writing this part of the post from an airport Starbucks when I am usually running at this time of day. I’ll try my best to make time to get other runs in. The advantage of this kind of schedule disruption is that I can run in new places and with new peoples. I’m planning to do a bit of parkrun tourism so I’ll report on that when it comes up.

I’ve been looking at races to enter next year. The ones that I have already entered are the Shonan Fujisawa City Marathon (half-marathon), and the Shizuoka Marathon. The Mt Fuji 100 (Kai) (70 km trail) entry opened on November 1st and I put in an entry, but whether I get a place or not is up to chance. For the Kai, I needed to have sufficient points accumulated to enter. I happen to have enough this year (from last year’s Izu Trail Journey), but if I miss entering this one I’ll need to find some other long trail races to do in order to qualify.

I mentioned last month that I was tempted by the 1st Nara Ultramarathon, but it seems that thousands of other people had exactly the same idea and the race was sold out within 30 minutes. So, I’m still considering Hida Takayama Ultramarathon (100 km) on 8 June 2026 (Entry in November).

During November I’ll be taking part in an iaido event (just a demonstration) but beyond that there are no other big races. I’m focusing now on the buildup to the Shonan International Marathon, and finishing up the remainder of the 3,650 km. As mentioned, the traveling and schedule disruption is going to make this a bit difficult, but I’ll do my best to stay as locked in as possible and try to get as close to 300 km in November as possible.

Looks like it’s going to be yet another challenging month. I’ll keep powering onwards. Hope you do the same. (I just need to recover from this bloody cold first).

Thank you to all my readers

I hope you had a fantastic October and are ready to get after it during November.

Osu!

Anthony