From the outside, 2021 looked like a dream year for Kaia Schmid.
Having made the switch from skiing to cycling just a few years prior, the then-18-year-old spent the season combining road racing with track, culminating in a junior world title on the track in the elimination race and a silver at the junior world road race championships in Leuven, Belgium, behind Zoe Backstedt.
Behind the scenes, though, Schmid was suffering with a disordered eating pattern that would eventually leave her suffering with the effects of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, or RED-S.
“I was limiting myself a lot and trying to be so anal about how much I could eat and when I could eat and I wasn’t really listening to my body, I was just trying to tell myself what was best for me. And I wasn’t actually listening to what my body wanted,” she explains to me from her home in Girona.
“After that whole year, I got to the end of the season, and I was just so cracked. Mentally and physically. It came to the end of October and I remember, I did a little trip to Nice, and one day I tried to ride and I could only push 100 watts. For two hours, I could not do anything.”
While it may have brought her success in the short-term, the long-term effects of her restrictive diet were catching up on the young American. Growing up, Schmid had combined skiing with cycling but her fixation on calorie restriction directly correlated to her decision to switch to cycling full-time in her late teens.
“As a kid I literally ate anything in sight. I did not care. And I wasn’t really aware of eating healthier. Like, it didn’t really matter. When I was hungry, I ate food. And it would probably be like cookies, and pasta, and carbs, and pizza and bread,” she recalls.
“Then, when I turned 17 and I got a little bit more integrated into the cycling world … I became more aware of my surroundings in terms of what other girls are eating.”
Schmid harnessed the strong self-discipline she had developed through years of sport and began restricting what she ate, particularly carbohydrates. “I thought that eating no carbs was going to do me better because I thought leaner was going to be faster,” she says.
It was a pattern that she carried into the following season, 2021.
“Essentially, it worked well for the year. I was still able to get a medal at Worlds but I think part of the reason I even lost out on that sprint is because I malnourished myself so much throughout that year – I lost my period for almost two years straight after that, and, I lost my sprint.”
From Nice that day in October 2021, barely able to turn the cranks, Schmid called her father back in the US.
“I was crying and I was like, ‘I just don’t know what’s going on.’ And my parents obviously knew, they could see that I had lost a lot of weight in that time and that I was way below the point that my body wanted to be at. So I came home and my parents were like, ‘you should start working with somebody or start seeing somebody.’ And so it was around November where I started to try to gain weight and regain my period.”
For women, amenorrhea, or the loss of a period, is one of the key warning signs of RED-S, but is also alarmingly accepted as the norm within sport. The absence of a menstrual cycle, though, is a red flag that the body is under stress and lacking the energy to produce the necessary amounts of reproductive hormones such as estrogen, which are also crucial for bone, cardiovascular, and cognitive health.
Schmid says she was unaware of the potential long-term effects of RED-S until she educated herself through reading books, citing Dr. Stacy Sims’ Roar as an integral part of her recovery from and education around the condition.
“I really had no clue what RED-S could do and I didn’t realise all the side effects until I read Roar, and was like ‘oh my gosh, I have no energy that makes sense and I’m tired and like my sleep schedule is off.’ And the book kind of explained everything to me,” she says.
“I really don’t think people know the consequences of it. I think if you’re menstruating, you’re going to have a way longer career than if you’re not.”
It wasn’t until she was forced to take some time away from racing in 2022, however, that she began to truly focus on recovery.
“I was going into the WorldTour [with Human Powered Health] so I started to train more, and I still wasn’t fully committed to eating more and fueling my body. So I ended up getting sick a lot as well. And that was another thing that comes along with RED-S is you definitely end up getting sick a lot because you’re not properly recovering with good fuel,” she says.
Schmid still did not have her period throughout 2022 and suffered with various illnesses including glandular fever (mono) which ruled her out of the Ardennes Classics. She went home to the US between April and June and finally returned to racing in July. However, in her first weekend back in the peloton she crashed hard, knocking out teeth, and had to wait another month to return to racing.
“But while going through all those challenges, that’s when I really started to work on getting my period back,” she says. “August was the first time I got it back and since then I’ve had it back regularly. So although I had a lot of challenges, it also gave me time to take off the bike and really think about my nutrition and fueling and I started working with a nutritionist.
“She really helped me to overcome the mental challenges because in cycling, especially, it’s just like everybody’s always commenting on each other’s weight and commenting like ‘oh, she looks skinnier this season, or she looks like she’s gained weight.’ And I noticed girls looking at other girls’ food. So it’s hard to overcome that when you’re surrounded by the mentality.”
Schmid says she learned to focus on her own fueling instead of comparing herself to others and eventually regained her period.
“I’m really thankful that I was able to get it back in August, and I’m feeling stronger than I have been in the past. Yeah, I’m heavier, but I think I’m a lot healthier now. And because of that I think I’m a lot happier on the bike, and I’m just enjoying riding my bike more.”
Cycling is a sport fixated on weight, with one of the crucial performance metrics being a rider’s power to weight ratio. But, says Schmid, there is a fine line, “I think weight matters but not at the cost of your health. And maybe your period is late or it might miss a month, but if you’re missing it month, on month, on month on month, something is wrong. And I think you need to address that.”
“There are ways to be super lean and healthy and fast on the bike without compromising how much you’re supposed to eat and it’s just about when you eat those carbs. And for me I wasn’t fueling enough around my rides.”
What advice would she give someone who was falling into the patterns that lead to RED-S?
“Don’t compare yourself to others in the peloton. Everyone has different needs, develops at different rates, and performs best at a different body size. Enjoy the journey and don’t get too caught up in the little things.”
As for her future now that she is recovered, Schmid’s goals on the bike have taken a more long-range perspective.
“Ultimately it’s to keep developing. Coming out of juniors it’s definitely a transition because I went from being at the top of the sport and now I’m fighting for like 60th place some days,” she says.
“I like to think I can eventually make it to the top of the sport, I hope so at some point, it’s just a matter of time. I wish by tomorrow I’d be like winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Brugge de Panne but I’ve had to take a step back and just focus on developing and taking it step by step.
“I would love to be able to win a World Tour race one day, and I’d really love to represent the US at an elite worlds and the Olympics get a medal one day, but I think, right now, it’s just going to take time, and I just need to focus on developing and getting better day by day.”