Most people’s epiphanies happen in a slightly less dramatic way than Victor Consunji’s, which sounds more like a scene from a Jason Bourne film than your typical ‘Ah-ha moment’. The property developer, construction heir and Filipino mega-athlete spent 48 hours stranded on a cracking ice floe on the North Pole in 2016, unsure if he would survive to see his family again. Unsurprisingly, it changed his outlook on life.
“Getting to the North Pole was straight-forward enough,” he says, breezily on the phone from Manila, describing his icy marathon. “I did a GPS reading, laced up my boots and set off. But there are a few major problems you face: the first is the actual running. When the temperature outside is -40°C, you are trying to keep warm, but equally you know you can’t sweat, as that ends with you looking like a popsicle and most likely getting hypothermia. Then there are the bears. But most of all is the fact the North Pole is made of floating ice.”