Katheryn Curi Mattis ’96 was rower when she attended Mount Holyoke, but since then has become a professional cyclist. Mattis took time out of her busy training schedule for an interview with the Mount Holyoke News.

MHN: I hear you’re from Connecticut?

Mattis: I grew up in Goshen, which is the northwestern corner… I moved out to Mountain View, California in 2002 and have been here ever since.

MHN: How old were you when you first learned to ride a bike?

Mattis: I had a tricycle…I always remember having some sort of bike. That’s a really good question. Since I’ve been really young, put it at that, I’ve been riding a bike.

MHN: When did you first really start getting into biking?

Mattis: A little bit in high school but more seriously I’d say probably in 1999. I started with mountain biking before I got into road cycling.

MHN: So you didn’t bike while you attended Mount Holyoke?

Mattis: I was a rower at Mount Holyoke (stroke seat) …I’m so jealous that you guys have the boathouse.

MHN: Do you have any favorite memories from Mount Holyoke?

Mattis: I would say a lot of it is around rowing. My senior year our boat won the CRCA’s, but we didn’t win we got silver to Smith…None of us thought we were going and then we found out we qualified – we were the total dark horse. I think we won the morning heat and then obviously smith was the favorite so they won, but for us to get silver medals was unexpected.

I feel really fortunate to have had that experience. Jeanne’s first year I wanna say was our sophomore year; she was new so she brought this great energy to the program. It was a good group of women the four years that I rowed, and I know that those are the memories that hold most because so much time was spent. People ask about my college experience and I think seriously that the rowing had the biggest impact, more so than even any of my professors or advisor I hate to say.

MHN: If I were to walk into your room senior year what would it look like?

Mattis: I lived in Safford on the third floor – I was so lucky my senior year. I had views of the green, I had a double futon on the floor. I had a rowing poster that was an overhead shot of an eight that said, “Pain is pleasure, ask for pain.” Which is kind of my attitude now. I had a dorm fridge – must have.

MHN: What did you major in?

Mattis: I was a psychology major and anthropology minor.

MHN: Do you use your degree now?

Mattis: So then I went to the University of Vermont for my masters, and I have my masters in counseling, with a focus in career counseling. To some extent I can say I use my degree everyday. Whether it’s my degree from Mount Holyoke or my degree from UVM, my friends joke, “Oh you just put on your counseling hat.”

A lot of it has to do with the lens through which I see the world and how it has been shaped. I don’t formally use them, but in some ways I feel like I use them everyday.

MHN: When you graduated were you looking for another way to continue being an athlete?

Mattis: Yeah. So after I graduated from Mount Holyoke I moved up to Vermont full time and I had been going up to Vermont every summer after freshmen, sophomore, junior year. I think just living in Vermont, it was an active lifestyle- I did rock climbing and hiking. Then I got into mountain biking. It was just part of what a lot of people did there.

I started racing mountain bikes in 1999; someone said to me, “Hey you should try coming out in Burlington. Just outside the city they have this outdoor center called Catamount (http://catamountoutdoor.com/) and they ran Wednesday night training races. So I showed up and I was like wow this is fun and then I was hooked.”

MHN: Can you detail your favorite cycling accomplishment?

Mattis: There’s actually three:
1) In ’05 I won the U.S. National Road Race
2) In 2008 I was the second American to win a world cup race and that was in Australia.
3) Then this last year I won a stage race in France and it was my first European win.

MHN: What is a typical day of training like for you?

Mattis: In starting this last fall, I got into going to the pool every morning. So I usually wake up at 5:30 a.m. and I’m in the pool by 5:42 a.m. I try to do that every morning just because I really enjoy it.
Then I usually come home, make breakfast, and then a lot of it just depends on what my specific training is for the day. I try to get my workout done usually in the morning or later in the morning so that then I have the afternoon to take a nap. Then it’s just general household stuff like grocery shopping or running errands.

MHN: Do you have a favorite bike?

Mattis: I like the bike I have now. It’s a fully carbon fiber, the manufacturer from Australia but they’re manufactured out of Taiwan…My favorite bike that is a pink full suspension mountain bike. My last year of racing mountain bikes, I raced on a team with two other women and we were sponsored by GT. GT made us custom pink colored bikes, that’s probably my favorite just because it’s custom.

MHN: Any last thoughts?

Mattis: I feel really, really grateful for the fact that I am able to be a full time cyclist. I have balanced full time cycling with other jobs, and all the jobs I’ve had have been really flexible and I was grateful for that. Now the last couple years it’s been nice to have the flexibility, like if the weather’s bad I can wait a couple hours to go out on my ride.

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4. Penny Gill’s exclusive interview with The MH News
5. Web Exclusive: Interview with Margaret Cho