WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE FOR BLACK FLY RACING, AN ONTARIO, CANADA BASED CYCLING CLUB FORMED IN 2004.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Spinning in Coffee Time


The First Race - Lake to Lake 2004


June 20, 2004. Niagara. This was the one that started the whole thing. If Jeremy hadn't invited us down to St. Catherines and try out this 50km MTB race called the Great Lake to Lake, the rest as they say could have been history.

And then, if Dean, Drew and Mike hadn't come over and started talking to us, Brenda and I might not have decided to do the Lake to Lake North in August. I guess everything happens for a reason.

As far as the race went, it was pretty crazy waiting for the start in the middle of 1000 people but Steve Bauer was there and chatted with us about his days as a pro and then we were off! The course was (and is) pretty fast with nice combos of road, gravel and singletrack to make it an interesting ride. It ended on the beach on Lake Ontario and I remember thinking it was the funnest 2 hours I had ever spent on a bike. Needless to say, I was instantly hooked to this bicycle race thing.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

A history lesson...


Welcome everyone to the Black Fly Racing team's blog. Here's the deal: we are an Ontario based, mountain bike team made up of 16 people from Toronto, Paris (Ontario), Uxbridge, Ottawa and Tillsonburg. Some of us also compete in road, cyclocross, triathlon, and running events so I guess we're a pretty active bunch. We've been in operation for a few years now, and now we have our final team name in place and will forever be known as the Blackfly's!

The team is named in honour of a former teammate of ours, Mike Spironello who passed away suddenly in May 2006. Mike, along with being a super-fast rider, was also a black fly scientist. Bugs & bikes, that was his thing.

We got this team going in 2004 and by the next year we found some local businesses who were willing to donate to our cause. From 2005 to 2006 we were known as Team Overdraught and we slowly but surely increased the number of members on our team. In 2007, Zavarella Construction became our title sponsor and we rewarded them with our first podiums in the Spring 8 Hrs @ Mansfield (3rd place), Lake to Lake (1st place!) and the Summer 8 Hrs @ Hardwood Hills (2nd place).

This year we grabbed a 2nd place in the Lake2Lake and decided instead of searching for a new sponsor every few years, we would call ourselves Black Fly Racing in memory of Mike.

Well, that's our history lesson for the day kids, so stay tuned for more posts. Bye!