Author: rayners123

I'm a 45 mother who was very active as a young adult and has just in the past 10 years has taken up sports again and loving it...I love being competitive in a fun environment. The friends I have made a long the way have been life changing. I enjoy the challenge and taking on new adventures...recently I have taking on road cycling. New long distance adventures await...
cycling · fitness · Guest Post

NYC 5 Boroughs Bike Tour (Guest Post)

rayners1231 Comment

NYCRideLauriSarahMay2015

by Sarah Rayner

On May 3rd I had the chance to ride New York 5 Boroughs Bike Tour and it was an amazing way to see the city and surrounding boroughs while doing something I love which is to ride my bike. Four of my friends and I registered in December 2014 for the tour and as soon as the snow melted we started training on weekends and riding to work. We set out on tour bus on the Thursday night and arrived in Queens to our hotel on the Friday morning…traveling by bus for that period of time is only fun when you are with great people.

NYCEnd

We had 2 days to explore NYC then on the Sunday we woke and headed via metro with bikes in hand to the start and  I don’t think I was totally prepared as there were 32000 cyclists with only 4 start times. There were at least 5 NYC city blocks filled with anxious cyclists ready to start. There was music that filled the air to pump us up, and once we got started it was a very smooth ride. We wore our Canadian jerseys so we could keep an eye on each other and we played Marco/Polo if team mates lagged behind. This really sparked conversation between other cyclists asking us where in Canada we came from and sometimes others would answer Polo to my Marco. The New York Police even rode the 40 miles with us.  We did the 40 miles in 4 hours with stops along the way.The ride ended in Staten Island where there was a party with food and music.

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32000 cyclist, 5 boroughs, 1 day and 0 cars…it was a great ride going over huge bridges, riding through very cool neighbourhoods with a ferry ride back to Manhattan once done. We had great laughs and great conversation throughout the ride….We will be doing this ride again for sure.

NYC

 

Guest Post · soccer

Soccer with A Twist (Guest Post)

rayners1232 Comments

by Sarah Rayner

Bubble Soccer What a Blast! This past Sunday my soccer team Poise had the opportunity to be a part of the first ever London Bubble Soccer Tournament.

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I went into this tournament having some soccer skills but not knowing what to expect. The organizer from KnockOutStigma called all of the captains a few days before the tournament to assure us it would be “good clean fun” and there was not much chance of injury being wrapped in a bubble. This made me feel a lot better!
I was pretty nervous thinking we would be the oldest team of all the women’s team but to my surprise we weren’t…we actually saw a lot of familiar faces on the field.

It was four on four 30 minute games which was pretty exhausting running with inflated bubbles on, but we played hard…we won 2 and lost 2 games. It was a highly energized, well organized event ant I would like to thank KnockOut for being able to scratch Bubble Soccer off my bucket list.

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I will be participating in Knock Out events again for sure.

Check them out on Facebook or website www.knockoutstigma.ca
They have a great mission to knockout stigma with LGBTQ athletes and their straight allies.

Here’s some outdoor bubble soccer videos:

And Sam’s post about bubble soccer: Bubble soccer!