The smallest moments may have the greatest impact in our life.
Gold Coast Marathon
I can still remember the day I turned left.
A university student and an expert at killing time, I once found myself meandering through the shops of downtown Camberwell before class. It was a place I knew like the back of my hand having grown up just minutes away, and I could now almost navigate it with my eyes closed. I recognised the stores that had withstood the test of time, like the cafés, the supermarket, the bakery, and so for that reason, something caught my eye that day. Something new that I hadn’t seen before.
I stopped, turned, and marveled.
Deep, gooey chocolate churned in vats behind the glass. Rows of brown slabs tempted me, protected from my greedy fingers by the opaque window. I suffered from a debilitating, chocolatey sweet tooth, and here was my weakness. It was all I could do to pull myself together.
I shook the cravings from my head. I turned back to the footpath fully intending to continue my journey to the train station, but the chocolate started to call to me.
Angus…
I salivated for something rich and sugary.
Come in, Angus…
I checked my watch. I had plenty of time, and the prospect of a hot chocolate certainly would help me study better for sure.
That’s right, Angus, you know you want to…
So I turned left into the chocolate store.
I was met instantly by the smiling face of a woman on shift for the day, welcoming me and inviting me to sit. She led me down the shop, past the abundant rows of chocolate bites of different flavours, and a see-through vat of melting, mixing chocolate. She asked what I wanted, and while I took a moment to think about it, I could tell she was ready for me to say “Belgian Hot Chocolate”.
What came was exactly what I expected. Just melted chocolate in a cup.
I took a sip…
And then I melted.
This was it. This was the best. I had never tasted anything like it. The chocolate rich, the temperature perfect for Goldilocks should she, too, wander in. I felt it warm me inside, and it brought a smile to my face. This was indeed the most delicious hot chocolate I had ever drunk in my life.
I was in heaven. I thought my life had changed.
And it had.
But as it turned out, not for the reason I’d thought.
This is not a story about hot chocolate.
This is a story about friendship.
Because eleven years later, while the chocolate shop is now gone, the woman who met me at the front was biking next to me for nearly five hours as I completed marathon #9 on the Gold Coast.
The Surfer's Paradise
You could say that the Gold Coast is Australia’s very own Miami. It’s a party town, a hotspot for after-school celebrations, and a place where I had holidayed before. Its long public beaches extend for many uninterrupted kilometres, making it a haven for family beach days all-year-round. The Gold Coast sits on the east coast of Queensland, Australia’s northern-east state, and so even in winter the temperatures tend to remain high and perfect, save for the tropical storms that make their way through a few times per year.
Since the start of the Hundred City Run, I had been thinking of this route and been salivating to mark it down on the journey, so I was excited to visit it on New Years Eve. The day I turned into Koko Black was the first day that I met my friend Kath, who since had perused excellence in sports science and now worked in one of the country’s top Australian Rules football clubs. From a distance she had been instrumental in helping to train, prepare, and improve my body to support the ability to go for one hundred marathons, and so it was a no-brainer that she join me (albeit on the bike) for this one for support and coaching.
I had planned this route almost from the very start if the Hundred City Run, and so we met early morning in Southport. The sun was only going to get stronger through the day, and so we set off with the wind around us.
Compared to Sydney, the Gold Coast was a dream of a track. It was flat, straight, simple, and I had very little to think about other than my breath, my stomach and my feet. I had charted a route along the walking path against the beach, and I had landmarks from my previous visits that I wanted to check off along the way.
The first turn happened at the most northern part that we would go: the Gold Coast Spit. Here, the open ocean water is funnelled through into the broadwater via an open seaway, fuelling the canals and channels through the city. Despite the warmth we felt the trickles of rain and spray, so the rainbows were out quickly. It was a beautiful sight to look back down south at the route to come.
A brief stop here so that we could check in, and take a few pictures. We were already loving it, but had a long way to go.
We started back down southwards to Burleigh, passing the set of suburbs that I knew well: Main Beach, Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach, Mermaid Beach and, ironically given how I described the city, Miami. I ticked them off in my head, having walked these same paths as a kid, and so I was in the unique position to know and feel exactly how far I had to go at all times.
The one downside of such a route is that you can see your turn-around point from a long way away, and anybody who has experienced this knows how slowly it appears to come towards you.
Kath continued to help. The heat continued to grow once the clouds had disappeared, and I could feel my body struggling in the conditions. She carried extra sets of water and electrolytes, helping monitor my fluids, giving advice on optimal intake (quick tip: take small sips at consistent increments, do not down it all in one or two massive gulps).
Luckily with the hills behind me in previous cities my knees and legs had learned to manage the forward motion, so I could focus on my hips and feet. However, I still struggled under the sun. Kath continued to support with words of encouragement and it was everything I needed through the last ten kilometres.
After nearly five hours we were back around Main Beach. Kath herself had achieved some new milestones on the bike herself and we both felt proud of each other for the experience. I stumbled over the mental finish line, stopped the watch, and fought back a few tears of pride; pride for the marathon, pride for the runs I’d completed to date, and pride of sharing the experience with a friend.
Reflection
It’s amazing how the smallest of instants – chance meetings and accidental happenstances that occur in the fraction of a second – have the capacity to affect our lives forever. It can lead to beautiful things, like friendships, love, and experiences, or it can lead to pure and utter devastation in a fraction of a second.
I thought of this friendship a lot as I ran on the Gold Coast, and how it resulted just from a split-second decision to turn left into a chocolate shop. The entire experience, and my ability to tackle the marathons so far, seemed far more achievable with Kath in my corner (even if from afar). I was amazed at how decisions made over a decade ago were still impacting my life today, and in a way that I could never have predicted. It’s impossible to know for sure what might have happened if I had never turned left into the chocolate shop, and instead just continued walking to the train.
So what about your split-second decisions? Can you think of any blink-of-an-eye moments that have shaped your life years later? There seems to be more than we realise. A chance introduction to a friend. A random encounter that led to a new interest. Hearing a new song or selecting a new book. Good, or bad, news from a doctor.
Most small moments lead to nothing, but it could take only one small moment to lead to something big, or new. It might be all you may need to help you forward in your pursuit, whether it be in sport, or friendship, or family.
So keep your hopes high for what is to come tomorrow, because you just never know what any interaction might lead to… and if you just happen to pass a chocolate shop soon after reading this, then my advice is to go inside.
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