Trail Run - Winnekenni

Today was a run day, and the weather was particularly beautiful for January (sunny & ~40deg), so I decided to run outside at Winnekenni instead of on a crappy treadmill.  Technically I was supposed to log a 3mi run today according to the half marathon training schedule I made for myself, but since I've been feeling really crappy running on the treadmill (and barely able to make it 1 or 2 miles) I decided to just try to "have fun" (as much as that is possible for me when running is involved) and just see how far I could go.  Was pretty psyched about how good I was feeling.  It was super muddy (way more than I was expecting) and there were actually tons of large icy patches that I had to stop and carefully walk over.  There were also a few streams to jump over, but this is why I prefer trail running to road running.  At a certain point on the trail, I kind of knew I was in the neighborhood of 2.5mi (from having run around Winnekenni before), and I made the mistake of looking at my iPhone with the Nike+ GPS app tracking my run.  I was right, 2.58mi, so at that moment I knew that I had just short of 0.5mi until I actually made my (non-goal) goal (no matter how hard I try to convince myself I can have no goal, I always actually do have one).  Of course as soon as I realized that I only had half a mile left, my legs turned to complete stone and it was like the worst half mile of my entire life.  I checked the phone again at 2.61mi, 2.63, 2.68, 2.73, 2.75 (at which point I was like "ok, a quarter of a mile left, that's like once around a track, I can totally do that - I'm not looking at the phone again until I'm definitely over 3mi") so I ran and ran and ran and decided that whenever I hit another super bend in the trail I'd look at my phone again...and I did, and I was at 2.91 - seriously??  At that point I essentially stared at my phone until I hit 3mi and stopped and stood still for a few seconds so I could try to log a "stop" in the GPS tracking and get my pace for the run part later on after I stopped.  Of course, I can't seem to view the nike+ website on Safari, so I'm guessing it's not supported, but that's a real bummer because I'd love to know my real pace.  I think I remember seeing that it was 37+ mins when I stopped, but I had a technical snafu at the beginning and started the run on the nike+ app before I was ready (maybe about 30 seconds or so) and I also had to stop a lot to avoid the glaciers, but I'm guessing I was still only about a 12:00min pace and I'm a bit disappointed by that because I swear I was running faster than that.  I really tried to pick it up in places just to see how fast I could get my pace, but according to the app my fastest pace was 10:32 and I'm sure I only kept that up for a few hundred yards at best!  Oh well, I'm not really that disappointed overall because I never thought I was actually going to be able to run 3mi non-stop today, so YAY for that!  That last half mile sucked big hairy balls, but that's ok.  I hope it's nice for my run tomorrow too, so I can run outside again because the one thing that today clearly indicated is that I loathe running on the treadmill.  I know it's all mental, but it's SO much nicer to have scenery!!  (and obstacles to make it fun).  Wait, did I just suggest that running could be fun??  What is wrong with me??

Anyway, when I did start walking back to my starting point I was feeling pretty darn good about myself.  And I can't wait to go out to dinner tonight for Michele's birthday and order whatever I want because I totally deserve it now!!