Pulsing disco lights. Thumping dance music. Lithe bodies in motion, sleek in the latest designer styles. Whoops and hand claps. Serotonin levels spiking. Air heavy with pheromones. And, in the thick of the action, your intrepid longevity columnist, schvitzing like a senior citizen trapped in a sauna.
Not, alas, a scene from a glitzy bacchanalian nightspot in the early hours of a Saturday morning. Instead, on a blameless Thursday lunchtime in the genteel London suburb of Richmond upon Thames, you find me halfway through my first-ever high-intensity interval training (HIIT) class at Third Space. Can I feel the burn? I can’t feel anything except the burn.
The class is called WOD: Workout of the Day. It’s run by an energetic young woman named Georgia, who barks instructions through a headset, urging us on. There are eight of us: six women, two men. The other chap is a heavily muscled, faultlessly groomed stranger in his early 30s. I am paired with him for the “synchronised” portion of the WOD, meaning I must match my press-ups to his, rest while he squats, and vice-versa. Do I detect a pity-taking slowing in his rhythm when he realises that his training partner is not quite at his level? Reader, I do. In an unspoken compact, he is quite plainly going easy on me. By such tender mercies is one’s faith in humanity restored.
