Written by the Elite Med Spa Team  |  Berwyn, IL

Lyons has more trail access per square mile than almost any village its size in Cook County. Ottawa Trail Woods and Portage Woods together hold roughly 300 acres along the Des Plaines River. The Chicago Portage National Historic Site sits on the west side of Harlem Avenue around 48th Street, marking the spot where the Des Plaines turns away from Lake Michigan. Hofmann Tower has stood at the old river dam since 1908. The Forest Preserves greenway path runs the river corridor, and Cermak Woods anchors the east side of the village.

If you live here, there is a good chance you run, ride, walk a dog or push a stroller on that corridor several times a week. That is genuinely good for you. It is also, over ten or twenty years, one of the more significant things happening to your face, and almost nobody connects the two.

Cumulative UV is not the same as sunburn

Most people think about sun damage in terms of burns. Burns are the acute event, and they matter. But the changes that bring patients to a med spa in their forties are usually the product of thousands of unremarkable exposures rather than a handful of memorable ones.

The pattern is consistent and it is easy to spot once you know it. Sun spots and uneven pigment across the cheekbones, temples and bridge of the nose. Broken capillaries and persistent redness around the nostrils and the outer cheeks. Loss of clarity and a mottled quality on the chest, which takes far more UV than people realize in a running shirt. Deeper crow’s feet from twenty years of squinting into a low sun. Rough texture on the forearms and the backs of the hands.

There is also a heat component that outdoor athletes deal with more than most. Exercise induced flushing repeated for years contributes to persistent facial redness and, in people predisposed to it, can aggravate rosacea. The trail itself is not the problem. The unprotected repetition is.

What IPL actually does about it

Lumecca IPL is intense pulsed light rather than a laser. Instead of a single wavelength, it delivers a broad spectrum of light that can be filtered to hit two targets at once: melanin, which is what brown spots are made of, and oxyhemoglobin, which is what visible vessels and redness are made of. That dual target ability is why it is the standard treatment for photodamage specifically, as opposed to for wrinkles or texture.

The recovery pattern surprises people. You are typically flushed and warm for an hour or so afterward, like a mild sunburn. Then over the next 24 to 48 hours, the pigmented spots get darker rather than lighter. Over the following week they flake off, and what is underneath is more even. Vascular lesions may blanch or change color and settle over a few days.

Most patients need two to five sessions spaced roughly three to four weeks apart, and it is common to see visible improvement after the first one. It is most effective and lowest risk on Fitzpatrick I through III skin, and candidacy is something we assess at consult rather than assume.

The scheduling conflict every outdoor athlete has

Here is the problem, stated plainly. IPL cannot be performed on tanned skin. The standard requirement is no meaningful sun exposure and no tanning, including spray tan and self tanner, for about four weeks beforehand. And you should avoid direct sun and wear broad spectrum SPF for weeks afterward as well.

Now consider what an outdoor training year looks like in Lyons. Base miles start in March. Long runs get longer through spring. Race season runs from May into October. The exact months when your face is most exposed are the exact months when IPL is contraindicated.

So the answer is not to squeeze IPL into July. The answer is to stop trying.

The productive plan is to treat photodamage in the off season, roughly November through March, when your face is at its natural color, when four weeks without sun exposure is realistic, and when the flaking week is easy to get through. Then spend the training season on maintenance and prevention rather than correction.

What to do during the season instead

In season, the goal is holding ground.

HydraFacial MD every four to six weeks. Outdoor training means sweat, sunscreen, dust and pollen sitting on the skin for hours. The vortex extraction step clears that congestion without the irritation of manual extraction, and the serum infusion step addresses the dehydration that comes with high mileage. There is no downtime and no light sensitivity, which is why it is the right in season choice.

Chemical peels can work in season, but with more care. A superficial peel leaves the skin more photosensitive for a period, so if you are running long the next morning, timing and sun protection have to be deliberate. We would rather schedule these on a down week.

Morpheus8 RF microneedling addresses texture and laxity rather than pigment, and it comes with several days of visible recovery. Save it for an off season block.

And then the unglamorous part that does more than any of it: an actual sunscreen habit. A mineral, sweat resistant SPF 30 or higher, applied before you leave and reapplied on anything over 90 minutes. A brimmed hat or visor. Sunglasses, which are as much about reducing squinting as about UV. Cloud cover does not eliminate UV, and neither does a 6 AM start in June once the sun is up.

The order to do things in

If you are starting from a decade of unprotected miles, the sequence matters.

Start with pigment and vascular correction in the off season. IPL first, because clearing brown spots and broken capillaries produces the biggest visible change per session and it establishes a clean baseline.

Then address texture. Once tone is even, textural issues become the obvious remaining concern, and resurfacing treatments are far more satisfying when they are not competing with pigment for attention.

Then maintain. A monthly facial cadence, real sun protection, and a single IPL touch up each off season will hold what you gained.

Doing it in the other order, which is what most people do, means paying for texture work whose results are hidden under uneven pigment.

Getting here from Lyons

We are at 6203 Cermak Road in Berwyn, which from most of Lyons is a short drive north on Harlem Avenue or east on Ogden. Ten minutes on a normal day. Our neighbors in Riverside make the same drive.

More on what we offer in your village is on our Med Spa Lyons page, and the full service list is on the Elite Med Spa home page.

 

Book Your Off Season Consultation

Elite Med Spa is at 6203 Cermak Road in Berwyn, IL 60402. New clients get a free consultation, and we will tell you honestly if the treatment you asked about is not the right one for what you want to change.

Call 855-293-1033, book online, or send us a message through our contact page. Our hours are Monday through Friday from 9 AM to 4 PM and Saturday from 9 AM to 2 PM.

If you train outdoors, the best time to come in is the month you stop racing. Bring your training calendar to the consult. We will build a plan that finishes before base miles start again, so nothing on your face is healing while you are logging hours in the sun.