Trying to improve my running

Well first day back in Tucson.It is hot (90's at 7-8 am). It apparently hasn't rained quite a bit as well. I was going to run up wasson peak but found that all the roads to get to it are washed out from the monsoons. I decided to just run some of the trails in saguaro park that I haven't tried before. It was a great run until I found a rattle snake on the single track trail and almost stepped on him. When I threw rocks at him to get him off of the trail he didn't even rattle which was a little disturbing. I then got off the trail and a little lost and had to bushwhack back to the trail. I was kind of nervous going off trail since I knew there were rattlers out here. So I went really slow til I got back to the trail. I think I am going to have to lay off the trail runs until the snakes go back into hibernation.  

ran up beacon hill today. I had decided I was going to make my august goal to get 20000 vertical feet in august so i started with this hill. after today I decided that is going to be to ambitious. It is too hot here in August. I am just going to go running everyday and see what I can accomplish. Vertical feet will also be hard to get if i am not able to do very many trails and most of the trails are washed out from the monsoons and the snakes are also a bit of a problem. hopefully i can still get 100 miles this month.

ran the loop through the park today. Parts of the trail are pretty washed out. No snakes though. I will have to try and to this trail at least 1x per week to keep the trails as part of my training.

My foot was hurting after thursday's run so I took friday off. I decided I need to do roads for a little bit because the pain is in the ball of my right foot and I think it is from stepping on rockon the trails and I need to let it recover. I did 8 miles today it was a nice hot run even though I started before 7 am. It was 80 when I started and closer to 90 then 80 when I finished. I was hoping to do closer to 10 miles but between the heat and my bleeding nipples I decided I should cut it a bit short. my average pace was 8:40/mile the last 4 where down hill and had an average pace of 8:15/mile the first 4 miles had all the elevation gain and were closer to 9:00/mile.