Cultivating positivity: Kasia Niewiadoma on switching off and giving it everything on the road

What you do off the bike can sometimes be as important as what you do on it for pro riders.

Physical rest days are a commonly accepted process when training to reach peak fitness, but a mental time-out can be hugely beneficial. For Canyon-SRAM pro Kasia Niewiadoma, properly excluding herself from the cycling world in the off-season is crucial for her.

Niewiadoma is known as one of the most upbeat riders in the bunch and she likes to try and pass that on to her teammates. This winter, after recovering from a racing injury and spending time with family in her native Poland, she headed to Boulder, Colorado with her partner — former professional — Taylor Phinney.

Getting away from it all, says Niewiadoma, gives her a chance to be everything she wants to be when the season rolls out again.

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“I feel like if I don’t get that disconnection moment, it’s hard for me to be who I am in that environment and to be able to give positive energy out, to be able to feel super motivated and to have the energy to give to others and also have some energy myself,” she told VeloNews in a recent phone conversation.

She says that it’s not just the opportunities that she gets that has kept her in the team, it is also the mutual respect she has with the team’s management that means she wanted to stay put.

“I feel like I’m able to be who I am, truly, I don’t have to pretend to be somebody,” she said. “I feel like I am listened to and fully understood. I feel like they trust me because if I want to communicate something with them, or something is not working, I know that they listen to me and they don’t think that I’m like trying to make up something just so I don’t have to go somewhere or like a specific race.

“It really feels nice to be understood as a grown-up. I feel that quite often in this sport, athletes are somehow perceived as kids. You have to always explain yourself, and you have to fight for your opinion. It always feels like we have to prove something.”

Niewiadoma says that sometimes riders don’t help themselves when it comes to changing perceptions and it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of having others sort your life out for you. With a retired pro for a partner, the contract between rider life and real life has been made much more obvious.

“We behave like that. The truth is, that’s what we do,” she said when asked why riders can be treated like children. “And it’s like, you can continue acting like a kid and then you’re being treated like a kid or you actually make a change. You can do certain things yourself, you know.

Giving it everything

After switching off for the winter, Niewiadoma has had a busy start to the season with a stint in Spain for a training camp, followed by her race debut in Valencia, where she finished sixth overall, and then Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

She is slated to race Strade Bianche this weekend, an event she has finished on the podium of four times. The gravel road race is one of Niewiadoma’s big goals this spring, along with Flèche Wallonne — another race that she has regularly graced the podium.

Whatever the results are this year, Niewiadoma wants to finish it feeling as though she left everything out on the road. Something she says she hasn’t always done in the past.

“Every race I start, I want to know that they did my best,” Niewiadoma told VeloNews.

“I definitely feel like sometimes in the past I would have moments when I finished a race and was like, ‘oh, man, is that it?’ I actually kind of lost the opportunity because I haven’t tried or I didn’t do what I wanted. That’s the mentality that I’m trying to employ into my life right now to always do my best and there are definitely a few races this spring that I want to win.

“I feel like it’s mostly about like listening to your gut feelings, listening to what your body is telling you instead of like waiting for the perfect moment that usually never happens,” she said. “Quite often in the past, I would be waiting, because looking at the past races, I would think maybe I did something too early, or I attacked too early. So, I would change my mentality to this very conservative riding and try not to spend my energy.

“When you start going like this, and when you feel like you cannot do too much because you might run out of the energy in the final, you just put yourself in this weird zone where you don’t want to do anything because you’re so careful about your energy.”

This isn’t to say that Niewiadoma won’t be saving energy when she needs to and she’s likely to skip this year’s Giro d’Italia in an effort to ensure she’s in full force for the Tour de France Femmes later in July. The Polish rider has often struggled with recovery following a big stage race and she doesn’t want to risk burning herself out before her big summer goal.

After years of having to answer “no” when she’s asked if she’s ridden the Tour de France, Niewiadoma is excited to be able to finally answer in the affirmative.