Mindy Zemrak - Mamabear to the Eco Racers
Meet Mindy Zemrak.
She’s the competitive relations director for World's Toughest Race Eco-Challenge: Fiji. In other words, she’s the master communicator.
Her team oversaw everything related to all of the competitors for the race – from newsletters to patches to moving gearboxes, and to our panic attacks – you name it!
In fact, everyone had to go through their own race. It was the world's toughest race for so many people in their own way.
Pre-Race
As a competitive relations director on the World’s Toughest Race, Mindy had to schedule all 66 teams through competitor registration. She had to tell the teams at which part they’re on now – whether that’s doing photos or they’re going on the ropes, or kayak, etc.
During the Race
Their whole job was to sign out the maps to every team. They had to figure out how to get the gearboxes from one camp to the next, which was about an eight-hour drive (not to mention they had to find some gearboxes that went missing). She had to leapfrog ahead to get to the next camp. And because they didn’t anticipate teams going so fast, they had to get to the finish line in five days while there were still teams at Camp 2 or 3. So Mindy ended up being at the finish line for a whole week because the first team finished so early.
Post-Race
They needed to get people off the island to the mainland but some people were hurt and people were tired. Then there’s a ferry schedule they had to run on. They also had to check if there were enough hotel rooms for everyone.
Mindy had this misconception that their workload would be lighter once the race started, but she couldn't have been more wrong. Teams were relying on her so she knew she couldn’t mess things up.
A Change of Perspective
For Mindy, this race was very special to her. Finding a family in the athlete population was something she’d never find in a Hollywood environment (by the way, she’s also the Emmy-nominated, supervising casting producer for the ABC series Shark Tank). And it wasn’t until this chance meeting with a Fijian woman that she had a complete shift in perspective and forever changed her life – all because that woman offered to share a meal with her.
If you want to learn more about Mindy’s experiences on the World’s Toughest Race, check out the Tales of Toughness Podcast on https://gosonja.com/podcast and get access to more resources on my community https://www.patreon.com/GoSonja.