I’m on a roll with my 2014 gift guide - Part 1 was a women & cycling book list, including auto/biographies, fiction, history, poetry, scifi, chicklit, economics and lots more books about women’s cycling/cycling by women. Part 2 was a look back at what people I’ve featured in previous years are up to – mostly creative stuff like art, illustration and jewellery, with caps and mugs as well. Part 3 is things that you can buy that are made by, or support, professional women cyclists. Some I’ve featured before (and like always, I don’t profit or benefit from including any of these), but there are lots of new things, starting with the newest…
Ally’s Bars are the brainchild of Specialized-lululemon rider Ally Stacher, who’s been making these all-natural, sweet potato, quinoa and date-based bars for friends and team-mates, and finally they’re available for other people too! You can read all about them on the website, and order a pack of 12 bars, and t-shirts for women and men – currently only available for shipping to the USA, because of issues around sending food overseas, but here’s hoping they’ll escape around the world very soon!
You can also find some of Ally’s recipes and much more on the site – and of course they have a twitter account.
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The Ally’s Bar company has been set up with the help of Specialized-lululemon owner/manager Kristy Scrymgeour, and Kristy also runs her own cycling clothing company, Velocio.cc. They sell lovely designs for both women and men, and bundles offers too, and t-shirt if you want to show support. I like the black and white stripes jersey, the signature jersey, the fact they have Ina-Yoko Teutenberg modelling the clothes too, and the interesting things through the links on their community page.
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2014 Team kit
Now, that’s not the Specialized-lululemon team kit, but if you want to buy some 2014 kit from the women’s cycling teams, I wrote some posts about that earlier in the year:
- Part 1, the Euro Pro Peloton: Bigla, Boels-Dolmans, Liv-Shimano, Lotto-Belisol, 2013 Specialized-lululemon kit, TopSport Vlaanderen and Wiggle Honda
- Part 2, the USA peloton: Colavita, Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies, Tibco, Twenty16, UnitedHealthcare and Vanderkitten
- Part 3, the UK domestic peloton: with kit and jerseys from Matrix-Vulpine (you can also buy the team Vulpine off-bike wear through the team shop), Epic-Scott, Wyndymilla, Shutt Squadra Donne, and Bike Pure
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More clothes
Some riders have their own shops selling clothing with their brand. The 2014 Road World Champion Pauline Ferrand Prévot has a shop, where you can buy hoodies, polo shirts, t-shirts, caps and even an umbrella with her PFP brand.
Maura Kinsella, who races for Optum, sells Happiness Watts t-shirts, which my twitter friend Megster says are super-soft. You can read her Happiness Watts blog too, and find out all about her philosophy.
And as I’ve mentioned before, USA cyclocross rider Meredith Miller sells Pretty In Pink t-shirts, with the profits going to a local Breast Cancer charity.
Trackie Beth Newell has been working on her project Keirin-Cut Jeans, which are designed for athletes who want a trim waist, but space for their quads and glutes. She’s just started a kickstarter to make them a reality, and I do recommend you check them out if you’ve always suffered, looking for the perfect pair (and I love that logo!).
Finally, Aussie cyclist Tiffany Cromwell is also a qualified fashion designer, and if your club or team are looking for a kit design, get in touch with her via her website. I’m still hoping we’ll have a design brand from her soon!
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Accessories
Dutch Road World Cup winner and National Champion Iris Slappendel has always run her design business alongside her racing, and she’s made all kinds of things – check out her portfolio – but what I especially like are the custom hand-made bags she makes out of recycled bike-based materials. They cost from €40, but get in touch with her and ask, if you’re interested (like all Dutchies, she has pretty much perfect English, if you can’t speak Dutch!) – and she can do all kinds of things.
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Coaching and riding support
You might have heard pro riders talking up the wonder of beetroot juice, and USA rider Jade Wilcoxson has gone one better, and set up Pure Clean Powder, which compresses the nutritional values of a whole beet (beetroot!) into a sachet of powder. Click through to the site to find all about the power of beets, and how you can buy some yourself.
If you’d rather buy yourself or a loved-one who loves cycling something a bit different, how about getting coaching from a rider? USA Road and ITT Champion Alison Powers runs a cycling coaching business, ALP Cycles Coaching - get in touch with her to find out more.
Finally a different kind of support, that you can help in a different way. The Network for Advancing Athletes has been set up by cyclist Amber Pierce to provide support for women involved in cycling, running, swimming and triathlon (especially young women and those new to the sports) through a mentoring programme in the USA and an online Q&A service, where questions are answered by Olympic and World Champion-level sportswomen. I interviewed Amber about the project recently, if you want to find out more, and if you’d like to do something different as a gift to yourself or someone else, why not give a donation to support their work?
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I’m always looking for more cycling (especially women & cycling) gift ideas, so if you have recommendations of anything you’d love to receive, or to buy for a friend, please do tell me on twitter, or in the comments – Part 4 of the gift guide, which is all recommendations, will be up next week. And don’t forget, you can help support this blog and our podcast by buying a selection of things with some of our favourite catchphrases on, we really appreciate it when you do that!
