I'm peaking?!

I completed the last of my tortuously long Sunday runs yesterday. I feel less bad than I have some other Mondays - including one when I could barely walk to work - but even still, I have shooting pains in both legs, an aversion to anything resembling stairs and a trademark limp that I'd like to coin Runner's Hobble.

Yet my running Bible says this is me in peak fitness; I now have to 'taper' my training program to less than half its previous intensity so I'm rested for race day. Apparently:

A good taper will make you feel like a horse in the gaits at the start of the Belmont... It is the feeling of peak fitness; use it to your advantage.

Wow, I feel sorry for those horses. Admittedly, I'm only in day one of the taper, but I hope this isn't what peak fitness feels (or looks) like. My body and I still have a long way to go after this race is over.