…Colfax Marathon Weekend happiness? Okay, so that rhyme didn’t quite work out, but now that you’re here…

Good morning, all, and happy April! This week, I’m so thrilled to share a guest blog post from Peter Westerhaus, Founder of Achieving Cures Together! We have been so lucky to work with Peter and to support the incredible work he and Dr. Khoruts are doing to fight C. difficile and other awful conditions, and we are so happy to have him today on the blog post. Registration links and newest team updates follow his post. Please enjoy!

Guest Blog Post from Peter

I’d like to personally thank each of you for your support and generosity to the Haller family and Achieving Cures Together. I first met Emily and her parents, Tom and Kim, in 2017 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They made the trip north to participate in the Twin Cities 10 Mile Race on a cold and rainy October day. Upon meeting the family, I immediately saw their deep passion and care for others!

The Haller family experienced great sadness when they lost their Nana (Joan) to an antibiotic resistant superbug, Clostridium difficile in 2015. As many of you know, it’s painful losing a loved one. Remarkably, Emily took this pain and used Nana’s wisdom of “You can’t wait,” to drive change and make a difference. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to meet Nana. However, through the Haller’s work and your generosity, her legacy lives on.

Through your support for Running for Nana, Achieving Cures Together continues to accomplish our mission; to save lives by advancing microbiota research. To date, we’ve supported treatment for over 590 patients suffering from C. difficile at a cure rate greater than 90%. You have all contributed to this work! Additionally, we’re also using microbial restoration therapy as the basis for research projects targeting other applications like Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s Disease, Diabetes, Autism, Depression and others. There’s still a lot of work to be done and we thank you for your continued support and generosity!

Last year, I had the opportunity and pleasure of meeting many of you at the Colfax Marathon in Denver. I was very impressed by your group and it was one of my 2018 highlights. Not to mention, you’re a fearsome group of runners. In fact, you were so inspiring that you sparked my competitive juices and I will be joining you this year for the 10 mile race. While I’m not normally a long distance runner, I could not be more excited to be there with you all! Thank you for all you’ve done and I hope to see you at the finish line!

Best,

Peter Westerhaus

Founder – Achieving Cures Together

We cannot wait to welcome Peter to Colorado along with all of our other Running for Nana Team members in May!! To date, we have  TWENTY SEVEN people on our Team, and thanks to your remarkable generosity, we have also already raised $2,800 for Achieving Cures Together and their continued fight against C. difficile and other awful conditions. I cannot tell you how grateful we are to everyone who is on this journey with us.

We have a little over 6 weeks to go until race weekend and still plenty of time to register or donate to this adventure. AND if we have either 6 more 5K participants or 3 more Sunday race participants register by April 15th, Achieving Cures Together will have a tent in the Charity Village at the finish line!! If you’re planning on registering, now is the perfect time! Below are the quick links:

Colfax Registration Link (be sure to select “Achieving Cures Together” when it asks if you want to run for a charity): https://www.runcolfax.org/races/register/

ACT Donation Link (you can specifically select the team member you’re supporting now too!): https://www.achievingcures.com/colfaxmarathon

Thank you again to Peter for sharing this post and to each of you for reading! Sending you all big hugs.