Finally off prednisone!

It's official, I'm finally off prednisone. It's been a rather long journey being on that stuff for 4 months. I'm feeling great and think that this time I'm finally in remission. I was a little worried there for a while that I wasn't going to achieve remission, but I'm incredibly glad I did. I actually just met with my gastro yesterday, and I won't have to see him until November! It's nice to not have to see him for so long. It's fantastic to be back to feeling normal again.

Training has been going well. We got around to running part of the race course, including the monster hill at mile 10. The hill wasn't too bad, but of course we hit it only a couple of miles into our run and not 10 miles into our run. The hill did kind of remind me a little bit of the cross country course we used to run in Hopatcong. Both hills have a "surprise" hill, where you're running up the hill and doing great, and then you think you're going to turn the corner and be at the top. But no, you're really turning the corner and keep going up, and up at a steeper climb, too. But at least I know what to expect now. Hopefully I'll be able to get down there and run that hill again so I can really get mentally prepared for it when I hit mile 10.

Overall though, the course is beautiful. When you reach the top of the big hill, you can look out to your left and have one of the best views of the Boston skyline I've ever seen. And a good portion of the course is on the roads in the woods, which I personally love. I'm looking forward to running more and more of the course, and especially to running it on race day on June 27!

With only 6 weeks left until race day, be sure to make a donation today! Every little bit brings us closer to a cure for Crohn's and colitis!

Love that boiled water

Mmm. Freshly boiled water. Nothing quite beats it these days.

Of course I'm hinting at the ongoing water crisis up here in Boston and the greater Boston area. Long story short, a pipe in the main water line burst along one of the seams (watch it burst here) and the city has been running on back-up reserves. The current supply of water has been coming from our nearby Chestnut Hill reservoir, and even though the water is pretty clean it's still essentially pond water, so we have to boil water for consumption. All things considered, it's really not that bad. People of course freak out and stock up on a year's supply of bottled water, depleting the local grocery store of any water whatsoever. Whatever, my roommates and I just boiled a couple pots of water and poured it through our Brita filter. I think we'll survive. I'm more or less nervous about what will happen to the supply of Sam Adams Summer Ale since the Sam Adams brewery suspended all their brewing.

They've already repaired the seam and are currently flooding the system with clean, probably highly chlorinated water. Even though the weather was hot and sunny today, I had to avoid the occasional surprise flood from pipes pouring the dirty water down the street and into storm drains. Other than that I had a pleasant 4-mile run this afternoon. The worst was coming home and having only a tall glass of warm, room-temperature water to drink. Gross.