Well, that was a good start.
It's 17:38 right now, and I'm done with the first day of my workout. I'll be posting these updates daily for the first week and weekly - for the rest of the 30 days. I did some running and started two challenges, both designed for 30 days: Burpee Challenge and Core Challenge.
I consider the 8 Weeks to 5K Challenge started, even though I discovered it post factum. I usually use my cellphone to measure times and lapses, but today I took my smartphone with me to make the promised selfie (here's the album, by the way - I did some more photographs while I was there). Said smartphone has glitchy battery life display: it stays on 15% until 5% (which I doubt, considering that it lost charge almost immediately after I started taking photographs), so I didn't know it was about to sleep. So I came to park, did the photoshoot... and it turned off.
All of this story's to say that I didn't measure the exact timing on the run I did, but from what I experienced, it comes close to what's in the 8 Week Challenge, so I consider the first day done as well as the others'.
I took the advice from Couch to 5K and took a five-minute walk before running, and it turned to help tremendously. Running felt a lot easier, because my legs weren't as stiff; I was able to run for longer, which made my lungs ache, but I felt like I could have ran for longer, which is a step forward. I'm going to continue taking walks around the part before running: it sounds like a good practice.
I started the day as planned, at 5:30, but it took long to reply to all the support and advice people gave me in the initial post, then I had to eat, take a cold shower to wake myself up and wait a bit before the food settled... Which is to say, I could have done it a lot earlier if I wanted to, which brings me to the next point:
I started lazily. It's true that I want to challenge myself and finally get some work done for my body, but it's also true that I'm a lazy person when it comes to physical work: I never had a chance to get used to or to adjust to it. I just finished the burpees and the core exercises, after an extensive amount of procrastinating. It's not to say that this is how things have to go for me - it's to say that I need more discipline in my work, be it writing or exercises.
The burpees and core challenges started off slowly, but the plank reaches proved to be very difficult. Maybe I could do a minute-long elbow plank (I did a plank challenge in the past), but to reach forward from that position is both new and straining for me right now. This difficulty is novel to me - other exercises seem boring because "meh, I can do... some... of them" - and, therefore, interesting. Let's see how I'm gonna climb this hill.
To track my progress, I've made a publicly available Google Spreadsheet. Feel free to take a look from time to time and scold me if I ever slack off or stop.
Well, it's 17:48 as of this moment. Have a good day, and stay healthy.
Once you get good at the plank reaches, moving your arms further forward for embow planks is a good progression that also gets your glutes. If you find your wrists being the weak-link in push-ups or other pushing exercises, doing static body holds on your hands instead of your forearms can help strengthen them. Looks like a pretty good first workout though. Don't be surprised if some stats go down tomorrow, I find I often do better the first day back at it than the following week or so.
Not really, though things like handstands, handstand push-ups, dips, and more advanced gymnastics moves like planche progression, ring work, and L-sits (which you should totally do when you can, you never look as badass as rocking an L-sit) can be incredibly hard on your wrists. If you are looking at gymnastics moves like those, you should also look at elbow pre-hab—elbows are notoriously flimsy really. At some point, if you don't get access to weights, in 6-9 months, heading towards these more advanced moves will be pretty much the only way to progress.
Thanks! I feel like I can do more at the moment, but you're right: I shouldn't jump over my head because of a single day of success. It is a powerful feeling - to accomplish something and to start something big, but if I let it get into my head, I might as well stop right here.