Image by Bruce MartinI’m fairly well convinced at this point that runners will do just about anything to get in their miles. With this in mind, I wanted feature the ingenuity (and perhaps slight insanity, but who am I to talk after running 15 miles last weekend in toe shoes?) of a local New Hampshire running friend.
One of the challenges we face while trail running up here in the summer are deer flies. They’re a major annoyance whenever you enter the woods, and advice on dealing with them ranges from sticking a fern frond in your hat so that it extends vertically from your head (apparently they aim for the highest spot, and you get to look like a crazy person while you run), or the more common advice to simply “run faster.”
Well, my friend Jim just posted a picture on Facebook showing a little contraption that he made to deal with the flies so that he could continue to get in his runs on his favorite trails. He coated a plastic cup with some sticky stuff called Tanglefoot
About Peter Larson
Nice hat! I’m also curious to hear what his wife said. I’m pretty sure I know what my 4 year old would say… :)
I know them too well. We grow them in plenty up here in Milan! Another trick that works (at low speeds) is to run backward and swat. On a 6 mile run in July I made the mistake of taking this one trail/forest road that runs along the side of the Upper Ammonousuc River. It’s a perfect breeding ground. I knew I was in trouble when I heard the familiar buzzing of deer flies. It seemed louder than normal so I turned around and saw a swarm of literally 150 circling my head. I chose Option B: ran faster! One did manage to land on my arm and started chewing under my iPod.
As if the black flies weren’t bad enough. Ah, summers in New England!
I love it! But I have 2 questions: Where does one buy this “Tanglefoot”…? And how did your friend attach the cup to his hat?
Ken – I think I linked Tanglefoot to a product page? Maybe I forgot to.
Pete
Provides a yummy snack to boot.
I don’t know what kind of flies we have here in NJ but I recently learned something about repelling them. My wife told me she read that you can put one of those fabric softener sheets (like Bounce) that you normally put in the dryer in your pocket. The claim was that they repel mosquitoes and other bugs.
The week before the walk I scouted out the trail by myself. There were lots of some kind of fly bugging me. This was without any repellent.
Then, at the actual event, at the same time of day a week later, all 16 of us put a Bounce sheet in our pocket. No one had any problems with any kind of flying critters. It was great.
But of course, we didn’t get to take any dead bugs home with us on a cute hat……
Hmm…maybe you can fashion a tech shirt out of bounce fabric – that would
be stylish!
Pete
That is hilarious!
You’re using my image of a deer fly without proper attribution. Please either attribute the photo within the requirements of the Creative Commons license, or remove it. Thank you,
Bruce Marlin
http://www.cirrusimage.com
Sorry – fixed the attribution. The image was served up by the Zemanta plugin
that interfaces with Blogger, and the attribution that was provided by
Zemanta was Wikipedia. My error for not looking further into the source.
Pete
Get over yourself, Bruce.
Any thick oil will trap these flies and works very well on the early spring black flies in Maine. We used white hard hats when logging and coated them with mineral oil. Blue might have worked better. I have no idea as I was taught the trick with white hard hats. Without this trick, cutting and peeling softwood trees was almost impossible without getting eaten alive.