The First KM is a Liar

 Why You Should Warm Up Your Ventilatory System Before a Race

You can have the strongest legs in the field, the best carbon shoes money can buy, and a nutrition plan timed to the minute—but if your ventilatory system goes into meltdown in the first 60 seconds of a race, you will feel finished before you’ve even begun.

Harsh? Absolutely. But true. Ask any triathlete who’s hyperventilated on a cold swim start and clung to a kayak like it was a long-lost friend.

Breathing is the one thing every athlete assumes will “just happen”. Until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it’s not a graceful fade. It’s a punch‑in‑the‑throat shock to the system, followed by panic, tightness, the sense you’ve suddenly forgotten how to swim, run, or paddle—and the creeping realisation that everything feels far harder

than it should. All because the respiratory system wasn’t warmed up at all.

The Harsh Reality: Race Starts Are Physiological Whiplash

The moment the gun goes, your body is hit with three simultaneous demands:

1. Central Command (Immediate)

Your brain spikes neural drive to both your working muscles and breathing muscles before your limbs even move. Ventilation jumps before CO₂ changes. It’s anticipation on steroids.

2. Muscle Feedback (Within Seconds)

Mechanoreceptors and metaboreceptors in your limbs relay tension and metabolite build‑up. This feeds into your brainstem and further ramps ventilation.

3. Chemoreflex (20–40 Seconds In)

CO₂ and hydrogen ions rise, accelerating ventilation to stabilise pH.

If your ventilatory system is cold or “sleepy” in these first moments, you get air hunger, chest tightness, a disproportionate rise in RPE, and the delightful impression you’ve aged a decade overnight. This isn’t your fitness failing—it’s physiology reacting to a lack of preparation.

Why the Respiratory Muscles Fatigue Faster Than You Think

Your diaphragm and accessory breathing muscles fatigue just like your quads. But when they fatigue, they trigger the respiratory muscle metaboreflex: blood is diverted away from your limbs to protect your breathing muscles. Your legs turn heavy and useless, and you start questioning your training, life choices, and possibly the race director’s competence.

For runners, the first kilometre is where physiology exposes every shortcut you took in the warm-up. The gun goes, pace spikes, and your ventilatory system gets hauled into a workload it wasn’t consulted on. That sudden surge isn’t “rusty legs” or poor pacing—it’s your respiratory muscles scrambling to meet neural drive, muscle feedback, and rising CO₂ all at once. If your diaphragm and intercostals aren’t already awake, you get the classic runner’s cocktail of air hunger, chest tightness, and a ridiculous jump in RPE that makes you doubt your entire training cycle. This isn’t a mindset problem. It’s biology. Warm up properly—get ventilation elevated, give your chemoreceptors a preview, prime your stride with short controlled efforts—and the first kilometre stops feeling like an ambush and starts feeling like the race you actually trained for.

The open swimming element of Triathlon is a notorious anxiety provoking part for many as it is.

Add the swim start full combat chaos and combine hydrostatic pressure compressing the chest, cold shock responses, narrowed breathing windows, and high tidal volumes. Even trained swimmers can feel overwhelmed in the first 200 metres. Most athletes think they’re panicking. What they’re actually experiencing is unprepared respiratory physiology. Panic is the symptom; the ventilatory system is the cause.

Stand‑up paddle races start at a frantic pace to clear the line and get to clean water at the front and away from the turbulence that likes to buck you off. So you go anaerobic within the first minute and sustain it for a long as physiologically possible. All whilst the demands of SUP racing layer on rotation, balance, bracing, and breathing simultaneously. A stiff thorax or over‑braced core pushes you into shallow, upper‑chest breathing. The rediculous lack of pacing in these early surges, singular to this sport in my experience, spike CO₂ production and ventilatory demand. Without priming, breathing becomes frantic long before fatigue should set in.

The Science of Inspiratory Muscle Warm‑Ups

Inspiratory muscle warm‑up (IMW) improves ventilatory response, reduces breathlessness, lowers RPE, delays respiratory muscle fatigue, and enhances performance across several sports. A typical protocol is 2 × 30 breaths at around 40% of maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP). I wouldn't know about that as I have no such device however even without one, structured diaphragmatic loading still primes the system effectively.

Priming Exercise: Why Skipping It Is a Rookie Mistake

Short bouts of high‑intensity warm‑up work improve VO₂ kinetics, reduce early oxygen deficit, blunt the lactate spike, and sharpen neuromuscular recruitment. It’s briefly uncomfortable, but far less uncomfortable than blowing up 90 seconds into your race.

A Practical Race‑Day Ventilatory Warm‑Up

1. Easy Aerobic Phase (8–10 minutes)

Raise temperature, increase blood flow, and establish calm diaphragmatic breathing.

2. Ventilatory Activation

Spend 1–2 minutes using 360° breathing with long, controlled exhales through pursed lips. Aim for an exhale that lasts twice as long as your inhale, and continue until your ribcage feels mobile and your breathing settles into a smooth rhythm

3. Race‑Pace Priming (3–5 minutes)

Running: 2–4 × 20–30 second strides at race pace.

SUP: 4 × 20–30 second harder paddling bursts.

Swim (if allowed): 2–3 minutes easy crawl plus short strong stroke efforts. If no swim warm up is allowed then do a land based one instead.

4. Nervous System Regulation (30–60 seconds)

You have primed the system now but don't want to start with your HR high so finally, use slow cycles of 360 breathing, inhaling for 3–4 seconds and exhaling for 6–8 seconds to stabilise the system.

A good pre-race prime intentionally nudges the sympathetic system up first — enough to wake the body and sharpen ventilatory response — and then, in the final minute before the start, uses long, controlled exhales to bring just enough parasympathetic tone back online. It’s not about calming down. It’s about controlled readiness: heart rate steady, breathing smooth, nervous system sharp. That combination gives you the fast start without the panic.

If Panic Hits in the Water

Roll onto your back or into breaststroke, regain air access, use long exhales, slow down briefly, and restart gently. This isn’t weakness; it’s strategy.

Make it One of Your Non-Negotiable's

Breathing is not an afterthought. It’s not automatic in performance environments. And it certainly shouldn’t be left to chance. If you invest months into training your body, you can spare ten minutes to prepare the system that keeps the whole operation alive. Warm up your ventilatory system. Your performance—and your peace of mind during chaotic race starts—will thank you.

Photo 📸 P3T Photography