The thermostat in my car reads a balmy 34 degrees. The sun’s shining and a nasty knifing wind that’s been blowing through the past couple days has lost most of its edge. Underneath my layers of thermals and fleece, it actually doesn’t feel that cold.

My car engine manages to warm up the whole way by the time I make the short trek to the Max Power gym. I, on the other hand, am not quite ready to be moving around so much on this Saturday morning.

Mike, of course, has other plans. He hands me the key to the shed and says to grab the Prowlers while he finishes up a private training. Ugh – the Prowlers always have a way of making me vomit on a cellular level. I start to scout for a discreet place to pass out as I start grabbing equipment. Before I can find a comfortable spot, Mike takes over and sends me inside to the gym to warm up with the others.

Ten minutes later as I’m trying to catch up to a fleet-footed 17 year old tennis star, I’m not quite so sure I warmed up enough. My glutes are not happy to be sprinting back and forth between cones, and my ego’s not too thrilled with the increasing gap between me and this youngster. Mike takes pity on my oldness and mixes up the pairs so the teenagers are together and I’m working with another <cough>twenty-something-or-other <cough> for the rest of the session. “Age before beauty,” the teenagers smirk when Mike calls me and Dave up to do the next set.

After a few sets of battle with a 250-lb tractor tire and a leg-killing circuit of walking lunges, jump squats, and yet more sprints, no one’s smirking anymore. We’re all struggling – struggling to coax 30 more seconds of work out of tired, burning muscles, to get one more gasp of air in before the cold burns a hole through our lungs.

After 45 minutes, we’re all spent (though I think those teenagers have another round of burpees in them). Despite the cold, despite the usual round of insanity that is Max Power training, we all agree to return in a week to do it again. And we have a new name for our Saturday morning winter weekend workout – Freezer Burn.