Your CX-Mas Gift Guide - Stocking Stuffers
Image: @cyclingmagazine.ca
The festive season is almost upon us, and no matter whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or the year-end office party, we can all agree that the REAL reason for the season is CX-Mas - a celebration of all things cyclocross!
This is the first of a series of articles to help you with your CX-Mas shopping, focusing on items you can pick up for less than $25 AUD.
If you or your loved ones are looking for things to buy for the cyclocrosser in your life without breaking the bank, look no further!
GCN+ subscription
Price: $12.50 AUD per month, or $65 AUD/year
The Christmas/New Year period is a time when most folks will find themselves sitting at home, with little to do, and much too full of food to consider exercise.
The good news for cyclocross fans is that it’s also in the middle of Kerstperiode (Dutch for ‘Christmas period’), meaning that you’ll have about 7 high-level cyclocross races between December 18th and the GP Sven Nys in Baal on New Year’s Day.
A GCN+ subscription is a fairly cheap outlay that will allow you or your loved one to watch full race length English-language broadcasts of CX races in Europe and North America, including the Telenet Superprestige, X2O Badkamers Trofee and Ethias Cross series (but not UCI World Cups or World Championships). We’ve been subscribers since last year and in that time the GCN+ app has gone from strength to strength, with the ability to now watch it on a laptop or PC greatly appreciated.
If you’re interested in other parts of cycling, the app also has coverage of road and track racing, in addition to longer-form films about bikepacking, tech, racing, and other cycling topics that make for great watching on the couch or the trainer.
The Service Course bike brushes
Price: $20 AUD
Cyclocross is a dirty sport, and in a muddy winter you could spend almost as much time cleaning your bike as racing it. Show your machine a little bit of love by washing them with these scrub brushes from The Service Course, available for sale through cxminded.cc.
These aren’t your ordinary brushes - they’ve got bristles made from tampico fibre that hold more water and absorb less grease than synthetic brushes, meaning more soapy water makes it to your bike. They’ve also got wooden handles, which means they’ll float if you happen to drop them into your cleaning bucket.
We’ve had the full BYOB set of four brushes for a couple of years now (available for $90 AUD), and they’re honestly so soft that you could use them in the shower. Most importantly they smell AMAZING.
Snakebite bandage
Price: $10-15 AUD from your local pharmacy.
This one’s admittedly more for our Aussie readers than those across the detch, but if you or a loved one are looking to ride off-road trails in the summer, you have to be prepared to encounter snakes (a.k.a. nope ropes, wiggly noodles, danger sausages or sneks).
A simple snakebite bandage is fairly inexpensive, can easily be stowed into a jersey pocket or bumbag, and could be a lifesaver if an encounter with a reptile goes awry.
A little outlay for a lot of peace of mind.