I NORMALLY give myself a gentle ride at the gym. I've devised a special, 'girlie' no-pain workout.

I stroll in, do a few cat stretches, check out the talent, mount a bike and catch an afternoon dose of Quincey on the muted screen.

I saunter out 20 minutes later with the glow of someone who has not broken out into a sweat but still feels damn fine for the effort.

Not so last week when I spotted my boss there. I was happily staring at the multiple screens going a tortoise pace on a space stepper when I came to the talent checking part of my ritual.

And there he was, all lean and mean and ready to prove why he was my boss and I his inferior.

He launched himself on the space stepper a few feet away from me and began to burn some serious rubber. Suddenly, I felt a surge of 'employees' revolt'.

So he's seen me chugging along and he's trying to prove something, is he? Well, I'll give him something to prove, I thought to myself with the defiance of Karl Marx's work-oppressed.

My machine started revving as I felt the head rush and my legs started going like Roadrunner.

Reminding myself that I must be at least ten years younger than him, I was determined to show who was god in the youth-led culture of the gym.

After feeling my bowels slightly loosening, I got off the stepper, reeling but triumphant. He must have seen me go. Now he knows to avoid the gym between 1pm and 1.30pm on a Thursday afternoon or come and be PUBLICLY THRASHED by a woman.

But I was not content with just winning the space stepper battle. I wanted the war to be mine so, ignoring the cramp, I wandered over to the 'big boy' of gym equipment, the 'rower'.

It glistened with the tortured sweat of all those hulking men who had sat on it that morning, all those men it had wrung out and near reduced to tears as they rowed their way through cardiovascular hell.

I strapped myself in and set the timer for 15 minutes. As I rowed, I began to feel the others rowing faster than me were a bad reflection on my ability.

I found myself racing the whole fleet and, suffice to say, I now believe only childbirth can hurt more than 15 minutes on the rower.

I finished off with mat work just to make my point. I put myself in the position of the plank and strained myself into a rictus of pain.

A few of my best yoga stretches and I polished off with waving goodbye to the gym instructor, as if to suggest we were old buddies who had started lifting iron together way back when.

I saw him back at the office, red-faced and cowed. I wanted to savour the glory up close, so I approached him and said: "Enjoy your workout? I went easy on myself today. I'm recovering from a hamstring injury." He didn't respond in the way I would have liked. "Oh you were there too, were you?", he said. "I'm training for the marathon so I'm in there every day."