Personal Care
Browse cycling personal care for sale in the UK: chamois creams, warming embrocations, sweat-resistant sun creams and the aftercare products that deal with saddle sores and windburn. These are the things that stop the friction and exposure of a long ride turning into a problem that keeps you off the bike for a week. Most of it only starts to matter past the two-hour mark, or in weather at either extreme.
What does cycling personal care cover?
Four groups, roughly. Anti-friction products, mainly chamois cream, applied where the pad meets skin. Embrocations and warming balms for cold legs. Sun protection formulated to survive sweat rather than swimming. And aftercare — antiseptic creams, barrier ointments and the like for saddle sores and grazes. They are bought in different formats for different uses: tubs for the bathroom shelf, sachets for a jersey pocket, sticks for reapplication mid-ride.
Do you actually need chamois cream?
On rides under an hour or so, usually not — if you are getting sore in that time, the saddle or the shorts are wrong and cream is treating a symptom. Past two or three hours, and especially on consecutive days, the friction adds up and cream makes a real difference to whether you can ride again tomorrow. Multi-day tours, audaxes and winter turbo blocks in a sweaty pad are the situations where riders who never bother otherwise start carrying sachets.
What is embrocation and when do you use it?
A warming oil or cream rubbed into bare legs in cold, wet conditions, roughly between 4 and 12 degrees, where it creates a sensation of warmth and helps water bead off the skin. It is applied to clean, dry legs before the ride, never underneath bib shorts or anywhere near the chamois, because the heating agents on that skin are genuinely painful. Wash it off with soap afterwards — warm water alone reactivates it, which is a lesson most riders learn once in the shower.
What sun cream works for cycling?
You want a high SPF that stays put under sweat and does not run into your eyes when you climb, which rules out most thin lotions. Pay attention to the places riders burn: the backs of the hands, the neck below a helmet, the tops of the ears, and the strip of thigh between short hem and knee. Reapply every couple of hours on a long summer day, since sweat and jersey sleeves shift it faster than the bottle's timings assume.
How do you deal with saddle sores?
Get out of the shorts and shower as soon as you finish rather than sitting around in a damp pad, and wash shorts after every single ride — a chamois worn twice is the most common cause. An antiseptic barrier cream on a developing spot at night usually clears it in a couple of days. If sores keep returning in the same place, the answer is a saddle or bib fit issue rather than a cream, and no amount of accessories will fix it.
How much should you pay?
Tubs are much cheaper per application than sachets, so most riders keep a 200ml tub at home and a few sachets in the saddlebag for long days away. Sun cream and antiseptic creams from a chemist do the same job as cycling-branded versions at a fraction of the cost; chamois cream and embrocation are the two categories where the specialist formulations are genuinely different. Check dates on anything that has sat in a drawer — creams separate and lose their preservative effect.