91Èȱ¬

Long-haul economy flights on a hangover; the music of ; interminable chats with your partner about where your relationship is heading while you are in the pub trying to watch the in a crucial Test match.

To the list of things that combine boredom and dismay in equal measure can be added a new one: aqua-jogging your way to a one-hour decathlon.

It wasn't meant to be like this. The slope was already steep enough as it was - learning nine new events from scratch in just over three months, bolting a 1500m on the end and trying to do it all in the sort of time that used to take sizing up a single safety shot.

That was before last week's hamstring horror while training with Dean Macey. Unsurprisingly, if there's one thing that makes decathlon training even harder than normal, it's having an injury that prevents you from running, jumping and throwing. Trouble.

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As comebacks go, Pakistan's turnaround from World Twenty20 whipping-boys to champions was as utterly unexpected as it was stirring to the soul. Phoenixes might want to consult copyright lawyers, soap opera scriptwriters think about upping their game.

at The Oval a fortnight earlier, comprehensively outplayed by Sri Lanka at this same venue nine days ago, Pakistan looked goners - disorganised in the field, toothless in attack and radars uncalibrated at the crease.

That they could be raising the sport's newest trophy at the home of cricket, with thousands of their green-shirted supporters cavorting in the late afternoon sunshine, seemed scarcely believable.

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It was all ticking along so well. Six weeks into the one-hour decathlon challenge, I'd survived Daley, done two training sessions in each of the 10 disciplines and started to feel a deep affection for the whole event.

To say I was looking forward to this week's workout with is an understatement. I couldn't wait. If there's one athlete you'd want to hang about with for a day, it's the Macinator. Laughs guaranteed, proper training rumble a certainty.

I had no idea how wrong things were about to go. I wish I'd known.

During the first hour there is little indication of what might follow, just the usual heady Macey mix of wisecracking and wallop.

It's hard to choose my favourite anecdote - it's a dead heat between the time he pushed so hard in training the grass on the infield looked white ("I scared meself that day") and when he made his Dutch training partner collapse with asthma ("I cut the rest periods in half cos he wouldn't run the 200m at the speed I wanted") - but it's nowhere near as hard as the medicine-ball drills that follow.

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This is the extraordinary story of a sportsman betrayed by his closest friend, of a life destroyed by someone else's cheating and deceit and of a sport struggling to cope with the aftermath of a doping explosion.

Tyree Washington could have been an athletics superstar. He should have gold medals galore, world records, sponsorship deals and a healthy bank balance.

He should have, but he doesn't. And none of it is his fault.

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Let's open out with a few numbers.

Four games in, four Lions wins. At the most basic level, coach Ian McGeechan can ask for no more.

39 points for the Lions, three for the Sharks. There should have been more for the tourists, particularly from their near-constant possession and pressure in the first half, but the shutout in defence was almost enough to see a smile cross Shaun Edwards' craggy chops.

15 penalties conceded. Gethin Jenkins will be having haunting nightmares about referee Jonathan Kaplan's interpretation of the scrummaging laws, but there were whistles all over - for offsides, for holding on and for refusing to roll away.

10 days to go till the first Test. It's almost upon us, and the team is taking shape.

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Scientists say the human brain is incapable of accurately remembering the sensation of intense pain. It's something to do with protecting ourselves, with allowing us to move on from traumatic situations.

I have great respect for scientists. Yet none of them, clearly, has ever done a three-hour training session with .

There is no forgetting. There never will be. I am more likely to forget my own name than I am to lose the memory of what went on at the last Saturday.

In retrospect, the clues were obvious - the glint in Daley's eye, the twitching of the trademark 'tache, the fact that, even aged 51, he looks like he could smash straight through a building's walls if he ever got fed up of using doors.

You can win at Bingo without training. You can fluke a victory in a pub quiz. But two Olympic golds, the world title, the European Championships, three Commonwealth golds and four world records, in the hardest sport of all?

There are no shortcuts. There is no luck. There is only brute effort, suffering and sweat.

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