The first hour didn't just hurt. It tried to murder him and claim self-defense.
Kieran kicked things off with the rowing machine, that smug bastard with its sliding seat and digital smirk. "Five hundred meters. Pace yourself."
Phei did not pace himself. He attacked the handle like it had personally insulted his mother, yanking with everything he had, feeling like a god for roughly forty-five glorious seconds before his lungs filed for divorce and his lats threatened to secede from the union.
By three hundred meters he was gasping like a fish on a dock. By four hundred he was negotiating with whatever deity handles cardio. By five hundred he folded over the handle, wheezing, and briefly considered converting the machine into a permanent residence.
"Two minutes eighteen," Kieran said, calm as a man reading the weather. "Not bad for a rookie. Sixty-second rest, then legs."
Sixty seconds? I need geological time.
But sixty seconds was all he got.
