Flushing when running - embarrassing!

[shovetheholly]

I am just starting to run again after a long break. It's hard work but I'm just starting to enjoy it.

Whenever I run - however fit I am - I go red. I don't mean that I blush a little. I mean that I look like a running beetroot. It is properly, properly BRIGHT red.

People stop and stare. Some have even asked me if I'm OK!

It's so embarrassing.

The rest of the time, I have terrible circulation. I am very pale and my feet are always like blocks of ice.

I do like to go at it wholeheartedly when I run, but I'm not pushing it to the limit. I'm way below VO2 max. Even if I take it slowly, I still go terribly red.

Is there anything I can do, or do I have to just suck this up?!

[CMOTDibbler]

I do this too (and am v pale and cold of foot). Just one of those things I think!

[GerundTheBehemoth]

I'm a red-faced runner too. I get the 'are you alright' comments and the alarmed looks. It is embarrassing - being fitter improves it a bit but not a lot. I just try not to think about it! Wearing a baseball cap helps make me feel less conspicuous - sunglasses would probably help too but I don't really like running with them on. I think it is a suck-it-up situation... the alternative is not to run and that's just not acceptable!

[dotty2]

I go very red too when I run. However, I once posted something similar about swimming and whether people really shaved/waxed all the time if they swam a lot and someone replied to say 'I take the view that if people can see how hairy I am, I am not swimming fast enough'. This has been my mantra ever since, and one I think also applies to redness and running. (I am making myself sound v attractive, am I not: red and hairy...)

[HipsterBeard]

I'm another who does this - I've never figured out any way round it, and it happens even when I'm fit and not pushing myself to the limit. Baseball cap and/or sunglasses, or running at night!

[HelenF350]

I go beetroot red too. I've stopped caring, there is nothing I can do to stop it. At least it looks like I am trying hard

[eleanoralice1]

There's others out there like me! Pale, bad circulation, ice blocks and redness! I just wear a baseball cap

[SaulGood]

I go very, very red. My whole face and neck is a vivid shade of puce. I don't have bad circulation though and I am really quite fit. I don't sweat really and I always assume that it's the only way I have of cooling down.

I am currently half an hour post run and I am still very red indeed. It will go when my core temp stabilises.

[QuietNinjaTardis]

Yep me too and it lasts for ages after. I've only just started running so in not even going fast!

[minionwithdms]

I have this after I swim - the worst part is that all of my face goes red except the area around my lips. So I look like a beetroot with a white moustache

[Dismalfuckers]

Ok, call me shallow, but this happens to me too, and I now put on a bit of makeup before I run.

It makes me feel better and less self conscious and hides the worst of the beetroot face.

I think if I were thinner and younger I wouldn't feel,so bad, but I do, so adopt artifice.

I am a makeup person anyway though

[MyBlackCat]

I'm a red faced runner too - takes me a good few hours to return to normal, stops me going to the gym in my lunch break

[HipsterBeard]

How does the makeup stay on, Dismal??? Don't you sweat it off completely within about ten seconds? Or is there some secret superstrength runner's foundation advertised in the back pages of Runner's World?

[SaulGood]

I could wear make-up when working out as I don't sweat.

However, I don't wear make-up ever and don't really care about how I look during a workout. I do get slightly narked, I suppose, by people saying "gosh you look red" because it strikes me as a complete and utter waste of words but generally, I just shrug and figure it's a price worth paying for good physical fitness.

[Dismalfuckers]

Just to be clear, I'm just saying what I do, not saying anyone else should wear make up either for exercise or at any time, just my choice to improve my confidence.

I don't enjoy running and wouldn't choose it as my form of exercise, but circumstances mean I don't really have any option, so need to try to make the best of it.

My super strong runners' face is done with some Double Wear Light. It's too matte and drying for me normally, but stays on remarkably well despite my sweaty red head.

[TheOriginalWinkly]

I go incredibly red too. Like a pp, I think it's because I don't sweat a lot so it cools me down. I stay beetroot for ages, puts me off going to the gym before work because the general public seeing me in uniform looking like I'm about to keel over isn't the best impression.

[HipsterBeard]

Not dissing your choice in the least, Dismal - just impressed that any cosmetic stays on! I admire people who genuinely let stares and comments bounce off them, but the unpleasant comments/low-level harassment/milkshake thrown at me from a moving car from passersby (in London) once stopped me running altogether because they wore me down, and knocked my confidence. So I say whatever boosts your confidence and keeps you out there.

[SaulGood]

Oh no problem with wearing make-up at all. I was just pointing out that I wasn't actually qualified to answer as I don't bother with make-up but the problem of sweating doesn't always apply.

I used to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and loved running. Now I live in a town and I rarely run for pleasure. The cars, noise, comments and heckling are bloody annoying.

[shovetheholly]

unpleasant comments/low-level harassment/milkshake thrown at me

Milkshake!!?! WHY - just WHY - do people do this?

I've had a couple of negative comments, generally from young men (and I mean kids really). One said 'Here comes Usain Bolt - NOT'. It was actually pretty funny. Milkshake isn't, though.

The best comment I had was from this awesome-looking woman with dreds. It was a few weeks ago, and I was doing that thing at the start of some C25K programmes where you run for 2 minutes then walk for one. I'd just started walking, and she said in this gorgeous Whoopi Goldberg voice 'Damn, you look GOOD running!' and grinned. It really, really put the fire back into me when I was feeling discouraged - particularly as I knew that I very much didn't look good at the time.

[shovetheholly]

Oh, and there is no way I could wear makeup. I sweat so much I literally drip

[ooerrmissus]

I go puce and sweat like a pig. I do get people asking me if I'm alright sometimes, cos I do look like I might keel over, to which I grin and reply something like' just done 23 miles! Only another 3 to go! ' and then sprint off round the corner. Whereupon I collapse because having run about quarter if a mile in total I'm knackered. ????

[LizardBreath]

I'm another beetroot, I generally wear shades or cap though as it helps me zone out.

Not had any abuse, but part of my regular run is through country house estate so lots of school trips. Once there was about 50 teenagers who saw me approaching, parted either side of the path and cheered me through, it was very very funny and also massively embarrassing!

[Usernamegone]

I always go beetroot red (and I am really bad in the heat). I just think it makes me look like I am working really hard and I proves my body is working properly as it is trying to get rid of the heat (at least that is what I tell myself!)

[Lottapianos]

I'm another red faced runner. All that blood puming around your face makes you skin glow like anything so don't worry about it

To the people who get heckled (me included), please console yourself with the certainty that the hecklers are without a doubt a) insanely jealous of you and b) possessed of the tiniest little pea brain imaginable. Anyone who harasses a person who is out exercising and trying to feel better about themselves deserves a bucket of cold sick in the face

[villainousbroodmare]

I used to get very red-faced. It kept me from bothering a lot in PE in school. Get it much less now.

[yumyumpoppycat]

yep I get this ... people think its because I am trying too hard and I should go slower and not be red No its because I go red at the drop of a hat.