Be Aggressive

Woo hoo! Long weekend time. It's not a traditional long weekend in that most people have to work tomorrow, but I took it off because we're heading down for the Philly Marathon. Actually, we're going to NJ first to stay over at Matt and Tricia's tomorrow night, then leave the kids with Tricia's mom so the four of us can drive to Philly Saturday morning. We'll hit the expo and pick up our race packets (Matt's doing the half) and then get some dinner before calling it a night. The races start at 7 a.m. Sunday, so we're going to have to get up super early to get ready. Temps look like they'll be in the low 40s for a high, which means at the start it should be in the high 20s or low 30s. That's when you wear stuff you can throw away once the race starts.

Physically, I feel pretty good. I did my last pre-marathon run today, 3 miles. Although I was a little bummed when I headed out and my right ankle was bothering me; it actually was because our comforter weighs about 2 metric tons and kinda forced me to sleep with my right foot bent to the side. Not sure how I'm going to deal with that tonight because it's so damn cold up there. At any rate, I walked a little before just making myself run and sure enough, it was fine after about a minute. Other than that, the only other concern is some chest congestion that conveniently showed up two days ago. Hopefully it won't be a full-fledged cough by Sunday; it shouldn't affect my lung capacity too much (knock on skull).

My third running column was published today, this time around focusing on cold weather running, appropriately enough.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?:

• So gas prices have been dropping like a rock around here. I filled up at $1.95 per gallon in Salem yesterday and I've already seen it for $1.83 at another place. Gas prices are lower than they've been in four years. I wonder if they'll approach the magical dollar mark that they were around in the '90s. Unfortunately, the stock market is plummeting at an even faster rate. It's getting ugly, folks.
• Apparently, hell has frozen over, because Guns N' Roses' long-awaited "Chinese Democracy" album is coming to Best Buy shelves on Sunday. No, really, it is. I'd heard some of the songs over the last few years when they were leaked online, but today, I listened to the entire album, which is streaming at GNR's Myspace page. On first listen, it was okay, not great. You can definitely hear the kitchen-sink approach Axl took, with a real glossy production and lots of bells and whistles. EW has a nice collection of reviews, which have been mostly positive. But for my money, what Axl should have done was brought back Izzy, Slash and Duff and made another balls-out rocker like Appetite for Destruction, which is one of the greatest hard rock albums ever made. If you've got a little time, check out this excellent and lengthy article on the long, twisted journey that Axl Rose went on while he tried to make this album. Just nuts.