The Monthly Milestone (September 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. Inspiration comes and goes but there always seems to be something going on in the world that I can make an analogy out of.

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

Articles will generally be archived two weeks after posting.

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 October

Substack Stats

I ended August with 702 subscribers and I am ending September with 701. My subscribers are going up and down a little bit recently. I’m hoping that the 700 or so people around are a nice stable reader base. Hopefully it will eventually start going up again in the near future.

Monthly Training Stats

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

August run total: 183.4 km (August : 146.2 km)
August walk total: 75.3 km (August : 103.9 km)
August run/walk total: 258.7 km km (August : 250.1 km)
August elevation total: 2,021 m (August : 2,788 m)

Recently I have been focusing a lot more on the quality of my runs rather than the distance. Previously I was doing long runs every weekend but now I’m focusing a lot more sprinting on the beach to improve my technique. Running through sand makes it important for you to keep your knees high. I feel faster from doing this training and as the weather cools hopefully I’ll see the result of my continuous training.

Race/Event results

I entered 4 parkruns (5 km races) during September.

• September 7th: 20:57. 7th overall (2nd in age group) (Instagram pics here)

• September 14th: 38:46. Tail walker (Instagram pics here)

• September 21st: 20:35. 4th overall (2nd in age group) (Instagram pics here)

• September 28th: 20:14. 8th overall (1st in age group) (Instagram pics here)

Volunteering as a tail walker on September 14th

The weather is starting to get cooler NOW but most of September was still like living in an endless sauna. My times are gradually coming down again when I’m running as fast as I can and I hope that I’ll be able to get under 20 minutes again as the weather cools down.

At parkrun I volunteer whenever I am able to. This usually comes in the form of doing the volunteer explanation (in English, Japanese, or both) but I occasionally volunteer to be a tail walker if I know I have a race coming up. While taking it easy on one of the days I volunteered as a tail walker, got my 25th volunteer credit and now I have an additional badge to show on my parkrun profile. It’s good to give back.

On September 15th I took part in a relay marathon with the Enoshima Dash group. I wrote a full report below, but the long and short of it was, two Enoshima Dash teams entered, it was fun, I got a new record on my mile, almost passed out multiple times, we came in 9th and 12th. Great day. Would do it again.

And speaking of Enoshima Dash, I am still taking part in the weekly beach runs as often as I can. I took a day off for the relay marathon, but other than that I’ve been at the beach every Sunday to sprint up and down the san with some really cool, really fast people (and the occasional dog).

Leading the charge…with a camera

Jump photos are a tradition

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 September:

• Choose your Enemies by Sandy Mitchell

This is one of the last books in the series. I’m starting an anthology in October but this is the last main entry in the series. Ciaphas Cain ends up running into his inquisitor girlfriend while battling both an Eldar incursion and Chaos cult on an ice world. Two branches of the inquisition end up getting involved to deal with both a simultaneous xenos and Chaos threat in the system. Another great entry in the series.

It literally took the entire month to get through this one. On September 30th I had about an hour left of this book and about 200 meters left to climb to get to 2,000 meters, so I finished the book off while doing hill runs.

Final Thoughts and Hopes for October

September was another hot month but pretty much as soon as the equinox happened the temperature dropped. Japan is very punctual like that.

Running a relay marathon during September was incredibly hard. I can kind of understand why there are not so many major running events in Japan during the summer months. Maybe one day I’ll be able to get sufficient flexibility to run the Hokkaido marathon where it’s cooler. (That will be a story for way in the future).

Unfortunately I did not get a place in the Tokyo marathon next year. Right around that time of year there are a number of other marathon events and the one that has my interest the most is the Shizuoka Marathon. I was thinking of entering either this one or the Saitama Marathon but based on the recommendations of my peers the Shizuoka Marathon was the more popular choice. Entry for Shizuoka opens on October 3rd so I’ll be putting in an entry soon.

Another event that has my interest is the Nobeyama Ultramarathon which is held in May. One of the guys on my relay marathon team has run this event several times so this is likely going to be my go to big ultramarathon for next year. (Entry for this one opens near the end of November).

My strength training and flexibility is going pretty well. I mentioned I would start doing more of this during September. This is all still a work in progress though so I don’t really have anything to ‘show.” Just staying on the grind there. I also mentioned that I’d try to do more trail running but running into webs made me realize that unless I’m running with trail runners that are a bit faster than me, it might be better to leave most of the trail running until it gets cooler and the spiders aren’t setting up traps for me.

Right now I am getting close to my 100th parkrun. All of the parkruns I’ve done are at my local event but in October I will only be able to attend twice due to it being canceled on the 5th for an event and me being busy on the 26th. Hopefully I’ll be able to get up to 99 in October without incident and then complete the big 100 in November.

Looks like it will be steady away for October. No big events. Not even many parkruns. Just embracing the grind for some harder events to come.

Si vis pacem, para bellum
In times of peace, prepare for war

Thank you to all my readers

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

Osu!

Anthony