Don and Kathy and Cyclo-Vets,

I stumbled upon some nifty wound care products at the drug store last year: Hydrocolloid Dressings.  Johnson & Johnson, Band-Aid, Sav-On/Albertson, event Target.  If you have access to a medical supply store, you'll find many more brands and sizes of dressings.  A quick Google search will get you to online medical supply stores that carry a large array of brands and sizes.

You won't find them in every grocery store/drugstore.  The Albertsons on Balboa Ave. across from the 24 Hr. Fitness carries a good supply.  The Johnson & Johnson brand is the one you will find most handy; it comes in the largest size that I've seen in the stores.  The Sav-On/Albertsons brand is the other one that I can recommend.  The Band-Aid brand isn't nearly as good as the others.

After three good road rash infested crashes last year, I finally saw something in print about these dressings.  VeloNews.com had an article: http://www.velonews.com/train/articles/3909.0.html/

Skip past the poor man's remedies in the article and go to the high zoot road rash kit portion.  I pasted some of the info from that article below:

In layman's terms Duoderm has magical physiological goo in the adhesive that makes a gel with your oozy wound secretions and accelerates wound healing. These patches make the deepest road rash go from throbbing weeping raw nerve endings to happy pink nearly completely healed skin in about a week. They completely bypass the scab and pain stage. It's like a fake layer of skin, so you don't feel more than a slight ache under your skinsuit or even lying in bed with your weight on it.

Some people get a slight skin allergy to the adhesive after a couple of days, but this is far outweighed by the benefits. Another downside is the cost. A box of 10 4x4 Duoderm patches costs about 50 bucks, and they don't sell them singly. But look, if you're out there plying the roads on a $4000 bike, it may be worth your while to spring a few bucks on this stuff.

The dressings stay in place for days under normal conditions, but in a stage race they may fall apart and need to be changed daily. Perhaps you and a friend can split a box, or your bike store or team manager can buy a box and sell them in singles.

Tegaderm is a thinner bioocclusive dressing that works well, but not nearly as well as Duoderm. If you are too cheap for Duoderm or Tegaderm, 4x4 cotton gauzes can be used for your dressing. Be sure to apply triple antibiotic ointment and petroleum so they don't stick. Skip the triple antibiotic cream and Vaseline if you are using Duoderm-you want the adhesive right up against your wound. 4x4 gauzes can also be taped strategically on your Duoderm because there will be some goo leakage from the dressing.

Note that the doctor thinks that the Duoderm (a brand of hydrocolloid dressing) is superior to Tegaderm.  I thinks so, too.  If you have particularly oozy wounds, the hydrocolloid dressing may load quickly (become waterlogged) in a day.   Even then, if you tape cotton gauze to where the ooze exits the dressing, I found that the dressing is good for a couple of days.  For normal road rash, the dressings have lasted four or five days for me.  I you exercise, the dressing will absorb the sweat from your pores, thereby limiting the dressings lifespan.  Even then, in my experience, the dressings still do the job for about three days. 

If the dressing isn't large enough to fit your wound, they can be overlapped to fit.  For a big abrasion on my hip, I would use two large Johnson & Johnson and a few smaller SavOn dressings to get full coverage.

These dressings will significantly reduce the pain.  They reduce the time needed to dress the wounds.  You can wear clothes without getting ointment stains.  You can shower without pain until it's time to change the dressing.  Here, I'd like to point out that peeling off these dressings or any other in my experience is easiest in the shower.  Go as slowly as necessary.  You'll find that you hair will have grown into/become one with the soggy dressing. 

If you are transitioning from dressings that had petroleum-based ointments, make sure that you wash off all the greasy residue.  Otherwise the hydrocolloid dressing won't stick effectively/begin to peel at the edges quickly.