91Èȱ¬

Fear. It wasn't there when I first tried the shot put, nor the long jump - but confronted by a flight of high hurdles, I can't shift it from my head.

I know it's daft. They're inanimate wooden barriers, not a despot's long-range missiles. Unlike the missiles, they'll also fall over harmlessly if I boot them with my foot.

What's the worst that could happen? Unfortunately, having spent a masochistic hour earlier in the day watching hurdling calamities on a , I have a pretty good idea.

The range of accidents is remarkable. People trip and nose-dive into the hard track. Others stumble into the first flight and wear the hurdles across their chest like wooden bandoliers. Some simply plough through them like demented bulldozers, slowed down incrementally by each barrier until they collapse in a confused heap of limbs and spikes.

Never before has 1.07 metres seemed so high. Never before has 110 metres seemed so far.

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Never meet your heroes, they say. You'll only end up disappointed and disillusioned when they turn out to have feet of clay and hearts of stone.

To this, I say two words: Dick, and Fosbury.

If I'd changed the face of a sport forever, won an Olympic gold with a technique that defied doctors and disbelief, it would almost certainly turn me into an insufferable braggart.

Not . If there's a friendlier, more convivial legend in the world of sport, you've probably made them up.

I'd wanted to ask Dick for his advice as I prepared for my first ever high jump lesson. Before that, of course, I had to get the full story of how he found his .

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Session Three of training for my decathlon-in-an-hour, and suddenly we've gone caveman.

This is a welcome move. There are insufficient opportunities for modern urban man to access his inner hairy ancestor, and the prospect of throwing a spear around a field had quickened the pulse all week.

Not that I've got much pedigree in the javelin. There was a brief lesson at school at the age of 12, but that mainly concerned how to carry one to the playing-fields without jabbing the bloke in front or behind you. Beyond that, it comes down to some monkeying around with garden canes in the long hot summer of '91 and the occasional launching of driftwood back into the sea on subsequent beach holidays.

Indeed, javelin once got me into considerable trouble at a Christmas dinner, when guests were taking it in turns to read out the jokes from inside their crackers.

"What do you call a bird that can lift heavy weights?" asked one old boy. I jumped to my feet, misjudging both the mood and the number of mulled wines I'd stuck away. "!" I shouted. There had been a horrified silence before the old boy piped up again, his voice quavering with fury. "No," he had said. "The answer is 'a crane'."

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There are many ways you'd ideally like to feel before your first ever crack at the pole vault - strong, spring-heeled, as energetic and bouncy as a teenage flea.

What you wouldn't want is to be struck down by a dose of man-flu so dismal that you're left with legs that feel like sandbags and all the brute strength of an asthmatic kitten.

Ordinarily under such circumstances I'd retire to bed with a cold compress and a month's back issues of . Right now, however, ordinarily has nothing to do with it.

There are just three months and three weeks to go until I have to complete an entire decathlon in under an hour. I have never even held a vaulting pole before. Surrender now and the battle is truly over before it has even begun.

Mentally, too, this feels like the first true test of my calibre as a wannabe decathlete.

This is not a sport for the weak of mind or limb. Pain-barriers must be smashed. Doubts must be crushed. Obstacles must be ignored, except the ones I have to jump over or hurdle.

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