well the good news is that today I joined a gym and worked out for the first time in a few months... the bad news is, by the end of my workout I looked like I had the sunburn of the century! An incredibly red, uniformly so (not even blotchy or on my cheeks) all over my face and neck.
I know that I am out of shape, but I also know from the past times that I have been in shape that I am the same way even then.
The redness doesn't go away for a good hour or so after exercising...
to tell the truth, its a little embarassing!
is there anything I can do to improve this? If not, its not the end of the world, but I am hoping there is some brilliant solution haha

I have the same problem cagesorwings...My husband and I just started working out together and by the end of it he's telling me that my face almost looks purple! I don't know what to do about it either. I've always been that way. Maybe its just something about us. One thing is that I am very fair skinned...maybe that has something to do with it. Or we could be working out too hard, and we need to slow down and take it slower.

Get a total skin transplant? I think it has something to do with being fair-skinned. I'm so white I'm practically translucent. Parts of my body look like I drew all over myself with a blue magic marker. I burn in the freakin' moonlight. I'm a pale, pasty thing. It's no wonder that getting all that oxygenated blood pumping makes us look all delightfully tomatoey. I don't think it has any thing to do with actual physical fitness either; my mom is a great runner and she always bright red when she works out.

sigh... well I guess it is a pale thing! I forgot to add that my mom mentioned that when I was a little kid, I would turn purple when I ran around a lot. Oh well! Thanks for the commiseration

I'm not that pale and I'm pretty fit, but I look like a sweaty beet by the end of my workout. So be it. I think it's just genetics.

I'm the same, my face is bright red by the time I finished (my PT will yell at me if I walk out without a red face) I look at it, as a way to see I've worked hard. Of course I do work out after work, so that's not a huge issue for me, as I go straight home afterwords.

I have this same problem, and I'm pretty sure I always will, healthy weight or not. My mom has always been one to turn red too, so maybe genetics plays a role. I get so red, and sometimes I feel like my face is on fire. In fact, my DH uses how red I am to try and guess how far I've run, lol.

I'll trade you in a heartbeat, hon! I hate living here. Although the running weather is about the best part. We will most likely be leaving here later this year, to either Virginia or Japan. Not sure which yet.

I always got beet red in the face. So much so my mom made me sit down, and so would the gym coach, etc. People were scared I'd have a heart attack, being that I'd had open heart surgery as a child. I've always been very pale myself, but I'd always linked the redness to the poor circulation caused by my heart problems over the years. And when I started exercising as an adult, I would get real red again. People commented on it, worried about it. But I shut them out and did my thing.

I can run several miles now and....not a drop of redness. Its not that I turn red after several miles...its just that I don't run farther than that unless I'm being chased. I think it gets better as your body adjusts to exercise. If you exercise hard regularly, you'll notice the redness will diminish over time. And one day, you'll realize you haven't been getting red for quite some time.

Yup, same thing happens to me! Although i will say not as much as when I first started... I think your body adjusts, at least a little bit. Then again, my face gets tomatoesque even when I'm not working out sometimes, not sure what's going on with that.

So yeah. Don't worry about it.. I wish there WERE a solution (it's not the most comfortable thing in the world, aside from being kind of embarrassing) but alas..

I agree with almostheaven.

I used to get mercilessly teased at school for looking like I'd just run a marathon. But now I can go several rounds with the boys and not looked puffed out. Although some days I still look like I might keel over any second!