ROBERT VANEMAN
WORLD TRAVELER / MARATHON RUNNER

Hi, my name is Robert, I was born in The Netherlands and have been living in Latin America since 1994 (Venezuela, Guatemala, Dominican Republic and Ecuador). It was August 2004 when my ST started. Was this the most important day of my life? No, it changed some things, but my life is still mine.

I never stopped being active and managed to control the worse symptoms within two months with Abbie’s exercise program. This gave me 18 great months in which I lived more than I’ve ever lived before. Traveled to 12 different countries in one year, went to all Disney/Universal attractions with my family, went skiing, snorkeling, waterskiing, etc. Probably due to all the excitement I had a serious setback halfway into 2006. In this period I traveled less, but made some very nice investments and concentrated myself more to the business part and less to leisure. August 2007, thanks to Botox and exercises, I felt great once more and I decided that I wanted to do something special. I decided to run the Rotterdam and New York marathon in 2008.
April 13th, 2008 was an important date. The marathon was then! My neck wasn’t that great for a couple of weeks, probably because of the hard training program. However, the sun was shining, so I wasn’t complaining. I was there; I was going to run the 1st marathon of my life!
Hundred of thousands of spectators cheered the 10,000 participants to the finish. It was relatively easy till the 18th mile. Then it got really tough. However, after 4 hours and 26 minutes, I managed to cross the finish of the 26 miles 385 yards road race, the longest run I have ever made in my life. And I even did it having ST! This was a great experience and I had a great day.
I just received notice that I was picked out of a big lottery of people to run in the New York Marathon this November 2, and I’m very excited and very motivated to do better than I did in Rotterdam. New York, here I come!

I have a great life with a great family. I feel that I’m doing more fun things now than I did before my ST. I try to do as much as possible and I’m getting good at it. For the NY marathon I put my target time to finish within 4 hours, that’s my next marathon goal for this year…

Great job Robert...and well deserved!!!
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