This is me pretending to be in shape.

Be glad I’m writing a text blog right now and not filming a video blog, because I am a dripping, sweaty mess right now. It’s only 6:30 a.m., but I already went out for a morning workout, and spoiler alert: I am in awful shape.

I always *think* that I’m in decent shape, despite a growing paunch that events like this morning’s romp are designed to address. But then I do things that remind me that, hey, I’m actually not very fit at all. Like that one time I went to Orange Theory Fitness with my wife, who says she hates exercising, but she blazed through that nonstop circuit of torture just fine, while I had to stop midway through to sit down and try not to pass out.

Or like this morning. I started a new workout regimen last week, one literally ripped from the pages of Men’s Health magazine. It’s a simple body-weight routine that doesn’t require a bunch of fancy gym equipment or even free weights. The “beginner” version is basic: a 5-minute jog to warm up, followed by 10 reps of incline push-ups, 10 reps of box squats and 5 reps of inverted rows, repeated 10 times with about a minute of rest in-between, finished off with a 1-mile sprint to “cool down.” Yes, 100 push-ups, 100 squats and 50 rows sounds like a lot. But I figured I’d do as much as I can and work my way up to it.

Last week, I did what I could. Woke up at 5 a.m. Started with a 1-mile jog to a playground near my house. Did 6 sets of the push-ups and squats using a bench. Skipped the rows due to lack of an available low bar. Ran about a half-mile back home to finish off. Exhausted but felt good.

Today, I got up about 5:30 a.m. Jogged a half-mile to the playground. There were some sketchy-looking dudes hanging out there, so I went over to the bleachers behind the baseball diamond to use the lowest bench there, which meant a deeper dip for the exercises. Did 7 sets this time of the push-ups and squats. And then I started seeing spots, which is the same “overdid it” sign that forced me to check out of Orange Theory for a few minutes. I managed to half-jog, half-walk back to my house, stopping a few times to sit on the curb in order to not pass out.

I feel fine now (just hungry, duh), but I feel less OK mentally. Because the thing is, 40 is around the corner. And as much as I like to act like I’m still in my 20s, I’m sure the reality of my lowered resilience is going to set in any day now (as my pal Manny pointed out during a ludicrous Twitter convo about escalator use yesterday). It’s part of the reason why I started this new regimen–not only to kickstart my fallen exercise discipline, but also to offset the forthcoming challenges of aging. I am not a person who is OK with being any less awesome than I was the day before, let alone the year or decade before.

At least I can take comfort in knowing I added a set to my routine today, didn’t pass out on the side of the road, didn’t get mugged by the resident park vagrants, and survived to fight (aging) another day. Now excuse me while I eat all the food in the house.