Dancing with the Devil's Dyke

I've never really liked dancing. There's plenty of evidence that doesn't support this statement; those that have witnessed the jogging on the spot, flailing-armed style of 'Dad dancing' that I made my own long before fatherhood, might be surprised that I don't like dancing. Those that saw me at the work Christmas party in 2000 would be surprised. (I met someone last week who had been there and the first question she asked was - 'Do you still have those yellow pants?' - and, no, she wasn't American!) Those who saw me shirtless in a Paris gay-bar sharing a podium with a man dressed only in a 'cock-sock' might be confused at the notion that I wasn't actually a raging exhibitionist. The thing is, and I am sure I am not alone here; I can only really dance when I have rinsed away the inhibitions with sufficient booze. Over the years I have perfected the ability to drink just enough - as a youngster there was only a short window between getting sufficiently loaded to pluck up courage, grab a girl and get on the dance floor before losing motor control and having to lie down and sob.

I know this is particularly long pre-amble, but I will get to the point soon. I was thinking about the nature of exhibitionism in relation to this blog - it is after all the ultimate vanity to commit words to the ether and expect people to read them with interest and it occurred to me that that I find it easier to write without really knowing if anyone is reading. Much like dancing; knowing or caring that I am being watched makes me self-conscious. The reason I bring it up this week is that this weekend saw our team of 4 meet up and train together for the first time and one thing that came out is that the guys all seem to read this blog. Now, writing this, I know they are going to read it to see what I say about the hike we did across 30km of the South Downs Way, taking in Devil's Dyke and Ditching Beacon. Suddenly I feel like I am on the dance floor without the benefit of a number of strong cocktails to get my arms waving.

I'll start with Saturday, which saw me link up with my new cycling club for the second time. I rolled into the Herne Hill velodrome at 8.30 to join the club ride, hoping to find a group I was able to stay with after the sobering experience of a fortnight ago when the steel-limbed Frenchman gave me a demonstration in hill-climbing. True to form I grossly over-estimated my own ability and joined the second of 4 groups leaving Dulwich and was forced to make a quick re-assessment and drop back to the slower 3rd group after the lung-bursting first climb over Crystal Palace hill. Thereafter, all was well and I mostly kept up through the morning as we circled the North Downs. So hurrah! I seem to have cracked the cycling club thing. It also didn't rain, which was a bonus.

So to Sunday, when it did rain. All day, sometimes quite hard, often horizontally and usually accompanied by strong winds whipping in from the south coast. Michael and I met up in Balham; he lives in North London with his wife and 3 young children, so I imagine his day ended with having to talk his wife down from the ledge and untying the children having left them all day. Like the other 2 team members, he works for IBM and is the one responsible for putting the team together. He's a runner and would love to have had us running the Trailwalker so I have had to let him down gently on this one. We drove to near the end point of the hike to meet John and Martin, the ex-army duo who also work at IBM. John had driven all the way up from Hereford with a pal who was to help ferry us around. He stayed on in Hereford after leaving the army, so I was pretty confident that if there was any need for us to get involved in unarmed combat we'd be in good hands.

Martin, from Cambridgeshire, had volunteered to be map-reader in chief and, being an ex-army officer, had the immediate trust of the civilians in the team and the scepticism of the military men. Apparently, you never trust an officer with a map. However, despite some discrepancies between the map and instruction provided by the organisers, navigation was spot on, a factor which I am sure will help us when we have to repeat the section at night having already hiked 50 miles or so.

So, one of the biggest questions for me - did we get on? The event is going to mean us going through the fire together and if we didn't gel as a team, this would make it a much harder event. Those of you who are thinking that walking is easy and anyone could do this - you're wrong. I have done lots of nutty things and I reckon this will be right up there as one of the hardest. Well, the good news is that we did get on. Sure it rained,  yes it was not the ideal day to go for a hike, but I think we all thoroughly enjoyed the day. We all have lots in common - age, marital status, children; 3 of the team work in the same company albeit they don't have much to do with eachother at work. Most importantly though, and partly because of the ravages of time and an enduring love of putting ourselves through insane amounts of pain, we have a shared lexicon of injuries. Never have I spent so much time comfortably discussing torn hamstrings, prolapsed discs, heart murmurs, deep vein thromboses, sciatica and all manner of other things medical.  I was amongst friends and the miles slipped by with relative ease. The only regrets were that these guys don't seem to completely share my views on the essential need to construct the day around good food stops; and that I completely forgot to take any photos until Michael and I stopped on the return journey to buy coffee in a petrol station.

The other time that I can dance without being self-conscious is when I am surrounded by friends. Now I can dance with Dulwich Paragon and with my Trailwalker team. Don't worry though, guys, I can explain the podium thing and it's not how it looks!