I totally agree, and understand exactly what you mean. With techno it is easy to completely lose yourself, hours can dissapear in what seems like minutes, once I get locked into the groove time just sort of dissapears. That to me is definately a trance state.

Trance on the other hand does not have such a continuous groove to me. As you say, there are lots of breakdowns and buildups and its all very stop and start, so its hard to get in a groove and stay like that for hours. I will say though, that old - dare I say it - psychedelic, goa, style trance was very much more trancey than what is called trance now. I haven't heard anything of that variety for years though.