My name is Yanni and I am a survivor

My dear family and friends,

Thank you for those who continuously support me and my cause! I have completed my winter season with Team in Training mid-January for 39.3 miles of Goofy Challenge and a Half, followed by a Tinker Bell half marathon a week later. 52.4 miles in 8 days, coast-to-coast and five medals!

I know that sounds really awesome, and it really was but there are more awesome facts I can share with you. For the winter season, Team in Training participants (1140 for WDW Marathon and 284 for Tinker Bell Half-Marathon) raised more than 1.7 millions for both events. That's an incredible number.

Those funds are used for research, patient support and many, many efforts that LLS puts to be one step closer to a cure. To give ME the cure. Someday IS today

Many of you are part of this incredible outcome as you were so generously donated via my fundraising effort and for that, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart and Iam going to shamelessly ask for your donation again because I really want to be part of the amazing effort to put blood cancer to an end.

Life is so short, and being a survivor, I am being reminded every day to live my life to the fullest, dream big and welcome any challenge ahead of me.

Having said that, I have joined Team in Training summer seasons and will complete the San Diego Rock n Roll marathon on June 2nd, 2013 and Seattle Rock n Roll Half Marathon on June 22nd, 2013. I will continue to run for those who can not, and for myself, who is incredibly lucky and blessed to be able to run. This will be my third marathon and my seventh half-marathon since I was diagnosed a little over 4 years ago.

In the next four months, I'll be running all over Seattle and vicinity , increasing my miles each week so I can complete the race. My goal is remain the same. To finish upright AND smiling. I know I can do it. I know I will do great.

Why I am running

I'm one of the lucky survivors who can have some new normalcy in life because of donation from people like you have made to fund research and devopment to improve a quality of life and cure. I have lost friends, and watched a few of them suffer. I felt helpless and often wondered if I could done more to to help than what I already did.

This event allows me to do something, and it will allow YOU to do something as well. Remember all those times you asked me if there's anything you can do for me? This is one of those.

Some of you have been so generously supporting me in my previous fundraising efforts and I thank you very much from the bottom of my heart, however, I am going to shamelessly ask again for your help. Why? Because not only you are helping ME, you are giving me and the rest of the blood cancer survivors hope. You are also helping give the families of the survivors tremendous support because Leukemia & Lymphoma Society offered incredible support to both the a patient AND their family.

TNT's endurance training program whose goal is to support, through fundraising and advocacy, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s mission to improve the quality of life for patients with leukemia and related blood cancers to aid in search for a cure, to improve public and professional education, along with advocacy and community service.

I'm so thrilled to be participating in this wonderful event, but as is true with so many things that are really worth doing, this can't be a solo effort. I need your support not only to raise the $3,500 donation but also to muster up the internal strength I know I will need to meet the physical and emotional challenge that lie ahead.

Please express your support in one or more of the following ways:

• Donate online to my online fundraising page here
• Send a tax-deductible donation made out to LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY to me. Please email me directly, and I'll give you my address to send the check to or do a donation online via my personal fundraising page here
• Help me spread the word about what I'm doing. Mention the Disney Marathon to 3 friends and ask if they'd be interested in sponsoring me? wait, make that 5 friends!
• Many companies match their employees charitable giving, if you decided to support me and do a donation, please ask your human resources about it and ask them to match your gift!
• Send me your inspirational and encouraging thoughts, poems, jokes, stories etc via email at yanni_robel@msn.com. Oh I could use a lot of prayer to for the success of this run and continuous health for me as well!
• Follow my training progress at http://yannirobel.com/running and cheer me via twitter as I train. You can follow me on twitter at @YanniRobel

Thank you for considering a donation to this worthy cause and for supporting a cause that I believe in and being a part of saving life. I personally thank YOU.

Much love,

Yanni

Do you know that every five minutes, someone in United States diagnosed with blood cancer?