To be honest, I don’t know what a shoe fly is, but I have recently figured out what deer flies are, and they are driving me crazy on my morning run!

I’ve tried everything — slathering myself with bug spray, wearing long sleeves, running waving my arms around like I’m a crazy person.  Nothing was working, so then I sought out the interwebs.

After reading the wikipedia page, which did nothing to help me with solutions for thwarting deer flies, I tumbled onto this hilarious forum.  Honestly, this forum is so ridiculously funny, I couldn’t stop reading the posts and almost peed my pants on several occasions.  If you’ve ever been stalked by a deer fly, you’ll relate to everyone’s story.

What’s disturbing is only the females bite and they use their “scissor-like mandible” to tear your skin open!  They evidently need the protein from your blood so they can lay more eggs to breed more unpleasant baby deer flies.

The most important thing I’ve learned is deer flies are also not attracted to smell, pheromones or other olfactory matter.  Deer flies are evidently attracted solely to dark moving objects.  This means, my dark brown hair flying behind me in a high pony and my often black tights or shorts are clear catnip for these lady blood suckers.

This brings me to my low tech and highly effective solution…a white running hat and white Pearl Izumi Fly Shrug.  Seriously, these two items not only make me invisible to deer flies, but also give me peace of mind while running.  The shrug covers my hard-to-reach shoulder blades when I’m wearing a run singlet and the white hat keeps the sun out of my eyes.

I have to be honest, I didn’t think I could run in the heat with long sleeves — and it does take a few minutes to get used to it the first time you walk out the door with your shrug on.  But it actually didn’t make me hot and did a nice job of protecting my arms from the sun as well as biting insects.

If you are tired of trying to out run or stop waving your arms around like you just don’t care…try wearing white, you might just happily co-exsist with the lady deer flies.