Joyette Jopson is the first Filipina to race and hopefully finish the North Pole Marathon.

I’m very excited. Who says no to an opportunity to make history — to be the first Filipina to race and finish the North Pole Marathon. Yes, it’s an opportunity of a lifetime. Have you done some research on the conditions you might be facing?

Yes, definitely! There’s really nothing there but ice. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it’s the northernmost marathon on earth. You can’t just book a flight to the North Pole. You can’t book a hotel. Every April they set up camp there, the Russian scientists. The organizer uses camps and they actually built the trail track. It’s just going to be about a 4.2-km. track. They want to make it contained. So you just do loops. This makes it easy for them to track where everyone is. Imagine being out there for 21k and back. It’s going to be so hard. There will be a plane on standby for an emergency. What’s your training regimen?

It’s actually like preparing for a marathon. It’s much simpler for me now compared to last year. Last year, I did two full Ironmans, so the training was more difficult and harder. But this time around it’s just run focused. I have run days where I do two runs, and then in between I either swim or bike or do strength work, because running is hard on the body. I try not to do it everyday so my body can recover. For strength, I do CrossFit. I also teach barre3.

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