## 5 Conclusions and Practical Applications  
The use of non-invasive physiological measures provides practical guidance to others who might study cold weather exercise, especially in field settings. Thus, these technologies are recommended in the field, especially given that there was no loss of signal for either heart rate, core body temperature or muscle oxygenation. Caution is advised that the application of the MOXY monitor to the VM and VL requires careful secure placement, especially if insulative layers are put over the legs, to not dislodge the probes. It was found that the length of the interim period does influence both physiological and perceptual responses. We would highlight that one of the most notable changes was thermal comfort, where 12 min of waiting produced significant thermal discomfort, potentially negating any value of a warm-up on subsequent performance. It can be ascertained that the effect of the cold exposure on thermal comfort is greater in females and necessitates likely different approaches to pre-competition management in males and females. The finding that core body temperature was overall less after the warm-up compared to the performance trial time highlights that a moderate-intensity warm-up may not be enough to counteract whole-body cooling in \(-15\)\({}^{\circ}\)C ambient environments, despite excellent insulative clothing. Furthermore, the value of keeping insulative clothing on during an interim period appears to be important to counteract further cooling that might occur in the non-intense exercise interim periods of 6 or 12 min. Our study compared no rest to 6 or 12 min of rest; however, it would be worthwhile to examine how rest periods of intermediate durations (e.g., 3 or 9 min) may alter the physiological and performance responses. For example, it may be that 3-min rest allows athletes to recover slightly from the warm-up-induced fatigue but not long enough to allow for excessive cooling, which could negatively affect performance and physiological responses. The practical applications of this research extend to several cold-weather sports where waiting for the start occurs [4]. To our knowledge there is no official manual, coaching manual or risk management advice on what should be the recommended length of time a participant in cold-weather winter sports, such as cross country skiing, should wait before their start. Furthermore, this study had participants maintain all of their insulative clothing for the interim periods (6 IP and 12 IP conditions), yet in many winter sports, athletes have to actually wait in just their race suit for a period of time [6]. The creation of applied risk management for a whole-body cold-exposure model should be a long term endeavor to provide sound evidence-based recommendations for organizing committees, athletes and coaches in cold-winter sports [15]. The strength of this study, by keeping the insulative clothing on, was that we could better isolate the effects of only 'time', without inducing another conditions (of removing warm-ups). Yet, this is also a limitation because it cannot be determined how no insulative clothing might have also altered these responses to a performance trial. It should also be noted that the effects of wind chill were not included, despite the importance that wind speed has on cooling in outdoor winter sports [4]. These results also extend to training sessions, where athletes and coaches can better control the length of waiting before a time trial or interval session, and the results of this study would recommend reducing the waiting time to less than minutes. For competitions, planning should be intensified, where each athlete should have exact times and locations of the pre-start and start area, and distances to be covered by the athlete before the start should be known and included in their pre-race plan. Conceptualization, M.D.K. and M.F. ; methodology, M.D.K., A.K.C. and M.F. ; validation, M.D.K., A.K.C., M.F. and C.A.W. ; formal analysis, M.D.K., A.K.C., C.A.W. and M.L. ; resources, M.F. and M.D.K.