Fare-Thee-Well, Nick...

The running community lost a friend last week. Nick’s friends asked if I can say a few words at his funeral service and this was it.

Delivering an eulogy is not something one has in his bucket list. There's no way one can prepare for this and our thoughts are still pretty messed up, so I humbly ask for your patience.

As runners, we're pretty accustomed to dramas within the circle. You'll always hear folks claiming they're not fit, not fast and so on, only to run their best times. All mostly smokescreen, you see. Our good friend decided to deliver us his version of the ultimate twist a few days ago.

I knew Nick since 2011 when the very first Gold Coast Marathon running clinic kicked off. He'd been my blog follower and we pretty much clicked from the onset - I supposed being just 3 years younger than he meant we shared similar likes and dislikes. His friends will tell you of his love for Star Trek, Marvel comics, WW2 history but I'll have you know that he's pretty partial to running shoes especially brightly coloured ones, possessed a unique talent for hugging poles, trees, boards, and what-have-you's and we'll hear no end of the Gold Coast from him either.

Long-time runners are known to be fastidious, set with ways of doing things, creatures of habit. He's no different. He's a stickler for timeliness, and is passionate for a job promptly delivered and well done. He'd run the same route so often we nicknamed a particular stretch of road in USJ4, The Nick Arthur Stretch. A creature of habit indeed.

Despite harbouring health issues the past few years, which some of us knew but didn't know the severity of, he continued to keep most of the pain and disappointment to himself. That didn't make him a selfish person, just a private one who didn't want to bother or impose on anyone. All typical of Nick. But whenever he was capable, he did try to live his life more urgently which actually shocked us since he's not known to be the adventurous type like the recent paragliding ride he undertook and the 21K+Marathon Challenge completed on the Gold Coast this July. I believe it was only due to his intense fear of water - he said he'd probably drown in an inch of water - that prevented him from signing up for a triathlon.

He kept making plans:

1. for a return visit to South Korea

2. to drag his wife to the Gold Coast next year because she’s been working so hard holding up the household.

3. to finally run the legendary Comrades Marathon, a 90+km footrace, in South Africa. In case you didn't know, he had completed distances from 50-84K.

4. to qualify for Boston

5. and plans were afoot to finally retire to KK.

You can see his dreams etched on the directional sign post in his garden - Boston (x number of miles this way) > Seoul (x miles that way) > Gold Coast > KK

The subject that's more important than what I've spoken about will have to be his family. His devotion and gratitude to his wife made us other husbands look bad, you know. And he couldn't stop worrying about his sons. So Nessa, Nigel and Darren, you were truly truly loved.

Then there was the dog. Pebbles made Nick her slave (his own words!) but the sentimental fella continued missing the pooch years after she crossed the Rainbow Bridge. Nick, you were a willing slave, so stop complaining.

The sense of loss is still not fully realized. But as I sit down writing this and going though his photo stream, it's only starting to hit. I'm sure it'll only get harder in the days to come.

I shall miss his self-deprecating sense of humour. I shall miss his running vain shots. I shall miss the planning of our annual pilgrimage to the Gold Coast, and on which day we will be hitting Betty's Burgers. I shall miss checking on his Instagram timeline for hints of newly acquired shoes. I shall miss the good times we shared and planning for the races we’ll be running in the years to come. Nonamesmentioned will miss complaining about the size of his race number holes. The running crew will miss the days when he'd run a tempo session followed by intervals and the sight of his beat-up Hyundai or red Haval where we park. We shall not be taking that hot air balloon ride that eluded us for the longest time.

You’ve run your race well, Nick. Rest up now. Everything will be OK. And please don't forget the bottles of soju.

Thank you.