We start with some gymnastics. I am relieved when I am at least able to hoist myself up to the bar. It's a short-lived triumph though, as I am completely unable to lift my knees beyond sitting position. I can feel my hands blistering as I hold on for dear life and there is something a bit humiliating about the trainers' enthusiastic encouragement of my very slight movements. Swinging feebly from the bar, I am grateful for the lack of mirrors.
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Next up is five minutes of kettlebell swings, double skipping rope jumps and barbell lifts. The idea is that while one partner works through this torture routine, the other runs 200 metres out onto the street and back carrying a 10-kilogram weight for women, 20-kilograms for men. When the runner gets back they swap, with the aim of doing as many rotations as possible in five minutes.
The trainers tell me to do squats rather than lifting barbells and to run without weights, and while my journalistic integrity tells me I should try for the full experience, my sense of reason tells me that if I did I would be likely to do myself a serious injury.
So I'm off and running and at first it's not that bad. After the first round I'm out of breath, and my legs hurt from the squats, but other than that I'm feeling good. After two minutes' break I'm back on the overhead bar. Having pretty much given up on this part of the workout, I go through the motions for a few minutes before heading off on my run. It's then that my legs choose to remember that I'm not an athlete. I start to feel like I'm running in wet cement. When I make it back to the gym my chest feels tight and I'm panting hard, I pick up kettlebell and it feels a whole lot heavier. By the time our second break time comes around, I'm starting to worry.
Round three, and while I start out running, when I'm out of sight of the gym I walk, leaving my partner labouring with the kettlebells, skipping and weights.
Round four I'm told I should probably sit out.
The next morning it's like gravity has me glued to the mattress. When I finally roll out of bed, my thighs are sore, my arms ache and there blisters on my hands from all those attempted ''toes to bar''. Worse is the pervasive feeling of tiredness I'll fight through the day. The day after that I'm still a little worse for wear but better, when the trainer Lindbeck calls me to see how I've pulled up. ''Fine,'' I tell her. After all, the experience was actually quite fun - in an excruciating kind of way.
