These days, along with my three resistance sessions a week, I spend at least 20 minutes per day doing some form of cardiovascular exercise. Some days this will be the 12km round trip to and from work on the bike; in summer it will be a swim down the beach and back (1km approx); the rest of the time I will spend it running, usually on the beach.

I first ran on the beach at the end of Southern Hemisphere summer 2010 and I absolutely adored the experience. It’s true, here in New Zealand we are spoilt for nice beaches, so putting yourself in a truly stunning location while you do your cardio work sure helps the experience.

It was at a house party a year ago that I really started to learn of the benefits of jogging on the beach. A guy I met there had once been quite the runner. Sadly, however, his knees had given in on him and he had been forced to stop. He spoke of the doctor telling him that he should never have run so much on concrete and that softer surfaces are the way forward.

I took myself out for another jog on the beach the very next day and I loved it even more than the previous times I had been.

Here are five reasons why I love jogging on the beach barefoot and why it is good for you:

1. Intensity. The loose and uneven surface of sand on the beach means you get a higher intensity workout than you would from a normal jog of the same distance or time. Essentially, it requires more calories to jog on the beach.

Sure, there is an increased chance of injury from barefoot jogging on a beach, which is why I would always recommend you start slowly and on the wet, harder sand. When you have got a feel for the beach, you can raise the stakes by moving in to the softer sands. Do this for a small part of your run to begin with then work in more as your get more experienced.

_{Te Henga beach, Auckland, is a great place to jog}

We’re quite lucky in New Zealand as a lot a of our beaches are kept very clean and rubbish-free. However, I would never recommend running barefoot on a beach where there is likely to be a lot of rubbish – the potential for injury really is not worth it!

2. Good for both your feet and your joints. This was the closer for me. I already loved running on the beach, but when I started reading up on benefits of running barefoot I was totally sold. Essentially not wearing trainers and running on a soft surface combine for a very healthy experience indeed.

3. Cost. Yet another benefit of jogging barefoot on the beach – this time a fiscal one: Not having to eat through dollars for running shoes is another fine selling point for me.

4. Less foot odour. Stinky feet are caused by tiny little bacteria that live on the feet. Firstly by running barefoot, you are giving these bacteria less of a chance to hide away and multiply inside your socks and trainers. What’s more, the constant abrasive action of your feet against the pumice-like sandy beach helps remove the dead skin that helps trap bacteria. It’s like a double win!

5. Fun. Jogging on the beach barefoot is fun. The beach I frequent is actually two beaches split at a point by huge sand dunes – I just love building both beaches into my run and the feeling of success having scaled the dunes twice!

Also, on hot days, your can end your run with a straight dash into the ocean to cool off. Or why not build up to your ocean swim with a barefoot jog along the beach beforehand?

Give jogging on the beach barefoot a go and you will not be disappointed!

Fruit strudel with ice cream… for breakfast; I’d arrive at my 9am lecture clutching a bucket of coke; chips, beans and cheese for lunch; culminating in a fatty burgery mess from the student bar for dinner.

OK, so that was my student diet. It improved in my late twenties. Slightly.

Miraculously, I managed to remain thin-looking throughout this ordeal, although I have since confessed that I was carrying it in a place where nobody could see it: My waist. Yes, due to many genetic factors, my body chooses to store its fat in one place and one place only – my gut.

If I’d carried on like that, I’d have had one heck of a bowling ball down my t-shirt top come my late thirties. I’d probably be heading for all sorts of nasties such as diabetes as well. I needed to improve my diet and I needed an exercise and workout plan.

I stumbled across Scooby’s Home Bodybuilding Workouts and seriously have never looked back.

Packed into Scooby’s site are loads and loads of workout plans, from beginner to expert, complete with demonstration videos of each suggested exercise. What’s more, and the clue is in the title here, the exercise and workout plans are designed for you to do at home, using minimal and cost-effective equipment. It’s like a double-win and really is a resource to behold!

The site is nicely laid out, with heaps of content – from exercise tips to low-fat recipes on the cheap. Sure, he makes affiliate commissions on some click-through sales, but he’s pretty honest about that at every step of the way, which counts as a plus I feel.

My exercise and workout plan, devised from the site, currently consists of:

- 20 minutes of cardio per day. In winter either bike to work or run the beach after work. In summer and parts of spring and autumn, swimming in the sea joins the options. Beach running is my favourite type of running – I go barefoot at every opportunity. More on that at a later date, though!

- Three sessions of resistance training per week. Up until recently, I had been focusing on different muscle sets per session, but now I am moving on to three full body workouts a week. Essentially the Intermediate plan from Scooby’s website, but with a couple of minor changes. For instance, I prefer the best scientifically proven abs exercise from Greg Brookes over crunches.

If you’re looking for some decent exercise and workout advice for free, then you have found it. This is truly the place to go.

Here are the lyrics for one of the songs that has been included in the Te Reo course, both in our weekly lessons and at wānanga – extra-learning weekends that occur twice a semester. When sung well, “Aue te aroha” is very ātaahua, or beautiful!

Aue te aroha
Aue te aroha

Ka rere atu nei taku reo powhiri
Nau mai, haere mai
Ko te whānau tēnei e mihi atu nei
Ki a koutou e
(Piki Mai!)
Piki mai, kaka mai
Hōmai tō waiora
Ki a mātou e
Tīhei Mauri
Mauri ora
E ngā iwi e

Aue te aroha (aue te aroha)
Aue te aroha (aue te aroha)
Aue te aroha (aue te aroha)
Aue te aroha

Thanks Josh and Tom for this. Made me smile.

What the…? No, really: WTF? (Play video to see John agree with me…)

As if this story making ‘news’ wasn’t bad enough, a video of the little grimer has now surfaced on youtube. Of him rapping with his mates. Sigh…

Crapsicle.

Recently, however, the log burner was out of service for several days while we waited for a chimney sweep to visit. This occurred during a really cold spell in Auckland and I am forced to admit we plugged the small, pretty hopeless electric heater in. Its inefficiency meant we wanted to keep its use to an absolute minimum (rightly so, as, even after the minimal use we gave it, it still added $40 to our electricity bill!), so I came up with the following five home heating alternatives:

1. Do the vacuuming
By far the best, this one. You’re going to do it anyway, so it might as well be when you’re cold. Have you ever noticed how much heat those things pump out? Plus, almost as a bonus, you get your carpets all nice and dust-free!

2. Bake a cake
In my experience, ovens are pretty good at making heat. I’m not saying try to preheat it with the door open, but you won’t be disappointed with the heat that huge chunk of metal sat in your kitchen gives off with a pan of cake mixture inside. You can even boil the kettle and enjoy the cake once the work is all done!

3. Have a bath
Treat yourself to a nice, hot (warning: not too hot!) bath. When you’re done, leave the water in it until cold. It will help!

4. Exercise!
Now is the time to follow the government’s advice and do some exercise. 1000 press ups or sit ups ought to do it, but beginners can start at ten and see how these warm them. Hopefully you’ll be eager for more by the end!

5. Insulate things
Although home insulation is a great idea, I’m talking about other things here. Like yourself. Try investing in a fleece or some possum-wool socks and wearing those around the house. Put an extra blanket on your bed. Or maybe an extra duvet…

So there you go. Next time you are stuck for some heat in the home, give these a try and you’ll be sure to survive the winter. And become stronger for it too. And a better person.

Obviously some little misinformed spade at the Post came up with this irrelevant pap some months after 9/11 and has been waiting for a ‘suitable’ time for its publication for the best part of eight years. When turmoil erupted in Iran recently, they presumably ignored the advice of several more-educated interns at the paper and ran the headline anyway.

It’s a real shame for them, getting it wrong on such a grand scale. All they had to do was open an ‘Atlas of the World’ and look up Iran’s main religion to see that this headline wasn’t actually appropriate in this case. This is the level of research readers’ hard-earned money is put towards at good newspapers.

My friend in the States saw the headline on a copy of the ‘paper’ in a cafe. He left, having remarked, in ink, on the front page: “Racial Propaganda”. I suggest you do the same.

A puncture on the return journey from Matakana at the beginning of the month was to set the bad luck rolling, this alone resulting in the need for two new car tyres to get the car through its WOF (Warrant of Fitness, like an MOT, but spelt different). On returning home that night, we prepared some food to cook, only to see the little blue flame of the gas stove flicker out and not re-ignite until I refilled the gas cylinder next morning. We also opened a bill for our quarterly rates payment that evening. It was abundantly clear: May was not going to be cheap; The fifth month of 2009 was certainly not going to be a bargain; A humongous saving; A deal to bite one’s arm off for.

No! It was going to be f~@$ing* expensive! The car breaking down and costing $500 to fix the following weekend confirmed our fate.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in the New Zealand rain forest at this time of year, but I can tell you: It can be cold and May was cold! Exceptionally cold apparently, with people stating it to be as cold as winter gets here (kind of good, as I’ve had a test run for winter now!). We became extremely grateful for our log burner during this time. We loved the log burner – it kept us warm. Until one night it started leaking smoke into the living room! So that was out of action for about six days until a sweep could come round and investigate. Yes, exactly: more expense! More notes prised from our cold little hands!

The sweep (sadly not a soot-faced little oik) explained that the cowl (no relation!) was broken and we needed a new one. The seemingly bargain price of $60 for a sweep took a $75 leap upwards.

Three weeks since the puncture and we tried to pour ourselves a glass of water. Nothing happened. Our home uses water collected from the rain, saved in a tank, so we went and checked the tank. Glumly, we discovered it was empty. We had not got round to clearing the gutters of all the rotten leaves and had therefore not got round to re-connecting the downpipes to the tank. Basically, we had not gotten round to collecting any water. A somewhat more deserved expense, this time, but still an expense!

Jen’s mother kindly offered to have us stay for the night, so we could shower in the morning, so we jumped in the second car to head over. Now that car wouldn’t start! By now we had had enough and just left it sitting there on the drive for a few days, until, nearing the end of the mother of all disastrous months, I went and gave it a good long try. Finally getting it started, it felt like things were starting to wear off.

Thankfully, the remaining costs of the month were kept to a relative low. They truly were a mean and nasty four weeks and I’m glad they are over. I know they are over because the 31st (exactly four weeks since the puncture!) brought me some kind fortune: I was called and offered a new job. A great job. A job I can’t wait to start…

*_flipping

Do waddle over and check out her blog here. And continue to check it regularly too!

Here’s the ‘Coming Soon’ ad they’ve been playing on TV3:

Super choice!!