Bruce's story: Black Fly Challenge

BaseCamp athlete Bruce Bunn shared his experience at the 2026 Black Fly Challenge bike race in New York.

This was intended to be a "challenge myself" event with a big move up to the Category 1 classification in this gravel grinder that sports an Open/MTB category in addition to the gravel category. I knew going into it that there were three nationally competitive riders in my age class. I came into the race really well prepared with the fitness to compete to the best of my abilities. Thanks to Paul Jobin for helping me to fine tune an approach to training that took into account my need to have a little higher acute training load and lower form at the starting line to prevent me from having lazy legs going into such a big effort. I really felt strong.

The course was fast gravel with descents that had a challenge particular to this race. There are scattered, moderately sized rocks protruding from the road surface that are nearly impossible to see at times, because there are many overhanging trees that cast confusing shadows on the road in bright sunlight. It was indeed a very sunny day, and I was prepared. On what turned out to be one of the fastest sketchy descents, I was doing round 25 mph. I was scanning the road as well as I could, and I was in the "MTB ready" position with weight nearly completely over the bottom bracket when I hit it. WOW! The front shock bottomed out with a ping that sounded like home run off of an aluminum softball bat. The seat came up and hit me in the backside hard enough to tip the nose of the saddle up a bit. I launched kinda like a MTB downhiller and came down squarely in control. Jumped off the bike and wasted no more than a minute trying to force the saddle partially back into position. Had a very brief surge of negative thoughts when I mounted up again: "My fork is probably toast," and, "How am I going to be able to compete for the rest of the race with the seat like this?" Quickly realized that the seat wasn't that bad and took off without looking back.

Overall paced it really well with an all-time PR at 90-minute power output. I came in 5 out of 13 Cat 1 riders in my age class and 5 out of 87 overall for riders in my age class. Really happy with those results.