Shoo Fly
September 28, 2009
There was an old song that had the lyrics:
Shoo fly, don’t bother me
Shoo fly, don’t bother me
Shoo fly, don’t bother me
‘Cause I belong to somebody
And this week we’ll be talking about flies for a bit. It always seems to happen – you’re having a nice picnic somewhere, when a fly shows up and lands right on your plate. You shoo it away, but he just keeps coming back, a constant reminder that you’re in his territory.
Well, something similar happened to me, but it wasn’t at a picnic. It actually happened on a bike ride.
We were out on a short mid-week ride – around 20 or so miles on a nice stretch of gently rolling terrain. We were riding in a tight paceline – one bike very close to the one ahead of it to get the same “drafting” effect ducks and geese get when they fly in “V” formation.
So we’re tooling along, around 19 mph and then I spot it out of the corner of my eye: a large deerfly. And I don’t just mean I had to dodge my head to avoid being hit in the face – I mean he was flying right alongside of us, weaving in and out of the different bicyclists’ heads like he was looking for someone in particular.
And the most amazing part was that he kept this up for nearly three miles.
I don’t know if anyone else noticed this or even cared if they did; but I was most spellbound by this spectacle – a deerfly keeping pace with a pack of cyclists going 19 mph for three miles!
Thinking I might have been hallucinating, I checked online when I got back home. Turns out deerflies can actually move that fast. They can’t keep it up indefinitely, but when they decide they need to, they crank it up a notch.
Are you the same way? When you have a great opportunity or an urgent deadline, can you put on a burst of speed that can get you to the finish line? It’s not something you want to do constantly – because you’ll end up burning out if you do – but when you need to, a quick, intense, and focused effort can make the difference between failure and success.
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