Proud to Pedal

By Erin Rossiter

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on November 8, 2005

The scars marking Dani Dembrak’s body allude to her nickname. “They call me ‘Crash,’” she said, flashing her elbows and lower legs as evidence of some bike rides gone bad. “My first year (mountain biking), I crashed 42 times in races.”

Picking the wrong path, or line, on her bike forced her to tumble over rocks and slam into trees. Wrecks caused her to bleed and stopped her cold.

But the hard knocks also moved her to keep going.

“She’ll talk about crashing,” said Babs McDonald, a friend and client of Dembrak’s. “Having to get up makes her go harder. She is just incredible to watch.”

For four years, McDonald has arrived to Dembrak’s gym twice a week to follow her directions to physical fitness. A cross-section of men and women, many middle aged or older, also venture to Total Training Center on Chase Street, carrying extra pounds and doctors’ orders to include workouts and rehab in their living routines.

Dembrak, a personal trainer whose gym is near its 100-member limit, juggles a full schedule of their fitness regimens as well as her own.

The 40-year-old cycles up to three hours during her 7 a.m.-7 p.m. workdays, which stretch out like body muscles. She climbs, treadmills, lifts weights and rides for miles in an effort to gear up for competition with the Porterfield Tire/Sunshine Cycles Racing Team.

 

Then Dembrak peppers her clients’ sweaty workouts with first-person accounts about her cycling progress on the roads and in the mountains, where she has moved from last place to the winners’ podium.

“My first year in mountain biking, I finished dead last in every race I entered,” Dembrak said.

She didn’t fare much better at the outset of road cycling. Her adventures started in the near freezing temperatures at Greenville, S.C., where Dembrak hit the pavement and skidded to her first road-race finish at the Spring Training Series in 1999.

When she switched to mountain biking nearly four years ago, Dembrak went from the results loser to winner, finally climbing to first-place in March at the Nova NORBA National Mountain Bike Series in Phoenix.

And in the pouring rain, Dembrak completed the Athens Twilight Criterion, a grueling, hour-long road biking feat that had always eluded her.

“The fact that she finished it … she’s very determined,” McDonald said, shaking her head of the rainy night race in April she watched Dembrak finish. “If nothing else, that determination pulls her through.”

This summer, Dembrak needed a bigger boost, however.

USA Cycling asked the Athens woman to represent the United States at the 2005 UCI Master World Mountain Bike Championships in British Columbia,Canada, as a result of her coveted first-place finish in Arizona.

But the invitation came only three weeks before the August event, leaving little time for her to secure sponsors. With Dembrak’s travel budget exhausted, and none of the expenses covered by the national organization putting the team together, she figured she could not go.

Her clients intervened. They raised the $1,500 needed to send their trainer to her next challenge.

“It is quite amazing what they’ve done to support her,” said Tina Pic, a professional cyclist who helps train Dembrak. “It’s hard to make it at the beginning. They are like her little family.”

Dembrak felt as though she owed them in return for their kindness. Her goal became to bring back a medal.

“I was really excited,” she said. “They believed in me.”

The joy turned to fear, however, when she started the race from a gravel pit with 40 other women in the master’s division, ages 30 and older. She maneuvered the uphill climb just barely, slipping and falling behind in the opening minutes of the race.

“I thought, ‘I’m in trouble,’” Dembrak said. “The girl from Britain knocked me over at the start. So I was dead last going up the hill.”

But the feisty competitor rebounded, passing opponents one by one during the event, which took her 1 hour, 27 minutes and 4 seconds to complete. On the last leg, Dembrak passed the woman who earlier had caused her to fall, speeding to a third place finish in the 40-50 age division.

In cycling circles, the achievement was “a huge deal,” said Jimmy Marbut

 

, who owns Sunshine Cycles.

Yet, Dembrak discovered an even bigger reward after returning to her Athens gym. A banner tied to a wall there read: “You’ll always be a winner to us, your team at Total Training.”

“It really didn’t matter to them how I did,” Dembrak said. “They just wanted me to have the experience. I’m so glad they pushed me into going.”

Her clients, many of whom have bought bicycles as a result of Dembrak’s efforts, are grateful for the motivation she affords them. In sending her to Canada, they simply wanted her to compete and have fun.

“She is an inspiration to all of us, (particularly) to all of us in our 40s,” said Dr. Glenn Alex, a client and sponsor of Dembrak’s cycling teams through the years. “She really inspired me to get back into cycling competitively, because I saw how much she enjoyed it. She really deserves this. She has worked hard.”