When you exercise you supposedly get a little endorphin high from the pain of the exertion. That's why some people get addicted to exercise. But all I seem to get is the pain and no gain.

Goddammit! Where's my high?

Today Silent Evil made us throw a big squidgy ball up at the wall above our head, catch it and then hold it while going into a squat. Then she had us hold a ball - that has a weight in it - step sideways into a squat with the ball down between our legs ("Keep your chin up!"), then step feet together and lift the ball above our heads. We panted and sweated and generally humiliated ourselves down the length of the gym.

The best one was with each of standing at opposite sides of the gym and doing a relay. Fluffy Bear ran to me with a 22 pound weight, handed it to me and I ran back to the dumbell rack. Silent Evil gave me a heavier weight, I ran and handed it to Fluffy Bear, and so on.

This was all on top of the usual side squats, push ups and normal squats. Three - count them, three - rounds of those.

There was one large woman puffing on a treadmill, thank God, or we would have been the only red-faced, fat, old farts in a gym full of bright, young, skinny things.

Of course I am responsible for us having a hard session today. I started off by telling Silent Evil how neither of us wanted to be there. I think she might have taken that as a personal challenge.

I made sure I gave her her cheque for the next month's training as soon as we got there. In my heart I knew that, if I left it till the end of the hour, I'd change my mind and cancel her services altogether.

Finally we got to the part on the mats. There are three or four sets of ab exercises, but I usually enjoy that part, knowing it's something I can do without too much strain, knowing we're near the end and knowing that, even though I still have to work, at least I get to do it lying down.

But it was spoilt today by Her Perkiness. There she was, perfect body, perfect hair (how the hell can your hair look good when you're working out, for God's sake?!), iPod in, pushing herself ubersuperduperhard and counting in a stage whisper as she jumped from side to side or lifted weights or did pushups or whatever imitation of a jack rabbit she felt like doing.

It's really hard, when you are at the end of a hard workout and can see the end in sight, to keep focussed when you can hear "Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!" going on behind you. It's even harder to remember how many crunches you've done when someone else is counting. It took all my self control to stop myself yelling "FORTY-SEVEN! FIFTY-TWO! NINETY-THREE!"

Perky little bitch.

When we finished working out, Fluffy Bear and I said Thank You to Silent Evil and headed to the changing rooms.

"Let's walk like we're really old and can barely stumble," I whispered to Fluffy Bear.

So we limped and groaned up the stairs, providing comic relief for our trainer.

I glanced back at her... she wasn't smiling.