I love trail running. Nothing beats it. I tolerate running on streets but I don't love it the same way. Something about the trail experience gets an additional

I love trail running. Nothing beats it. I tolerate running on streets but I don't love it the same way. Something about the trail experience gets an additional few parts of my brain engaged in a way that takes it from "i generally like running" to "whee!". Of course, I also like hiking and I love long-distance hiking, so maybe it's just hitting the same buttons. Which isn't to suggest that it's really about trails as much as it is that there are a lot of different ways to approach it that might work better or worse for other people. I've never had a marathon I didn't have some amount of misery in. Though I did have one half-marathon that was basically just pure awesomeness: I ran the atlanta half marathon, which I'd planned to race pretty hard, but got injured. So I flew down there, met up with my friend, and we decided to just run it as a training run. Heck - I went to the port-a-potty as the starting gun fired, since the lines were too long. Started in the back, spent the entire race passing people, and decided in the last 3 miles I felt good enough to go fast and dropped down to something close to race pace for them and enjoyed the hell out of it. Didn't come anywhere near a PR, of course, but it was a memorably fun run -- good company, nice scenery, good slow warmup, and no pressure at all on myself. And kinda good for my ego since we spent literally the entire time flying past people who looked not very happy to be there. :-)