Emelie Forsberg:
The second first time

Emelie, you were out for almost a year. How does it feel to be racing again?

Emelie: I’m really motivated, excited to race again and to see what I can still do. I feel like I have one chapter left as an athlete, maybe three more summers, so I’ve decided to really give it a chance.

Has that changed the way you experience races now?

Definitely. I’ve been racing for so long, but now that I’ve put a time limit on it, I experience everything differently.

Even picking up my bib or waiting in a long queue, I think, wow, it’s a privilege to do this. I know how much work the organisers put into a race, and I want to be there, listen and support them. The briefing, the prize ceremony, everything.

Maybe I took it more for granted before.

During your time out, what did you miss about racing the most?

I wouldn’t necessarily say it was racing itself.

Through my three pregnancies, I saw the sport growing so much and the level getting higher and higher. That made me really curious: Can I come back to another level? Do I still have it in me? Can I keep developing as an athlete?

I think the biggest thing is curiosity about my own physiology, and racing becomes a way of seeing where I am.

You’ve chosen to go back to longer ultras after almost a decade. Why?

It’s what I love doing most—60, 80, 100 kilometres. I haven’t had many hours to train over these past years with pregnancies, breastfeeding and small children at home, so I know it’s going to be hard.

But it’s a short time in life when you have the fitness to perform as an athlete. So I decided: okay, now it’s time to go back to what I really love.

What is it about ultras that you love so much?

I find it fascinating what the body can do. You can go up a mountain, down the other side, around another one, cover so much distance and see so many beautiful places.

When I started running, that was a big part of the attraction. Running gave me this feeling of freedom and exploration—physically, but also through the places I could reach.

And I’m still fascinated by the fact that we can move so fast through this terrain for so many hours.

Has motherhood compromised that sense of freedom?

I don’t really see it that way.

When we decided to have kids, we knew it was going to change our lives. I knew that for some years it would mean more planning, probably shorter training and needing more recovery.

But freedom is such a big word. We’re already so free as athletes—in how we live, where we live. So no, I don’t really feel like motherhood has taken that away.

And has it taught you anything that you now bring into training?

The biggest lesson is that you really don’t need to follow one plan. You can adapt. Maybe you can’t do what was planned, so you do something else. Sometimes it’s equally good, sometimes it might even be better, and sometimes maybe not quite as good, but it will still be fine.

I think learning to be relaxed about changing the plan has been really good for me mentally.

What does that adaptability look like in real life?

Sometimes you don’t sleep. Sometimes a child is sick, or the baby needs you all day, or you just feel that they need more time with you.

You have to be able to say, Okay, I’m not going training in one hour.

I think as a parent, you have to come second sometimes. My children will always come first, especially during these more intense years when they’re young.

Has your body changed after three pregnancies?

I don’t really think so. When I run, I still feel like myself.

The main complication has been my foot. When I raced Mallorca last year, my first international race after my third pregnancy, I was still breastfeeding. I think the relaxin and the looser ligaments may have been one of the reasons I twisted my ankle, and I’m still having complications from that.

But otherwise, running, I really feel like myself.

Where do you feel you have the most work to do now?

Honestly, everywhere.

I still feel one level below my best, and I don’t even know if my previous best is where the best women in the sport are now.

I need to work on downhill, uphill, flat running, strength… all of the base.
But I’m really excited about it. I love doing the work.

And what is still there?

My cardio is still pretty good. My uphill times are more or less where they used to be. What I’ve lost more is the speed and downhill running. But I think those things will come back faster because I have all those years behind me.

Has this season confirmed that for you?

Yeah. At the start of the year, I really didn’t know what it would look like.

Four weeks before Transvulcania, I still wasn’t sure I would be able to start. I only had around three weeks of running beforehand, so standing there and thinking I could manage an eight-hour race was already really special.

It showed me that my highest level was still pretty high. I was proud that I could live up to my own expectations.

What did you learn at Monte Rosa?

I was excited to try another ultra, closer to twelve hours, and Monte Rosa really motivated me.

But after around 3,500 metres of downhill, my quads just shut down. Every step hurt, and I still had another 3,000 metres of descending.

I thought I had done enough downhill training. Apparently not.

But you kept going.

Yes. It wasn’t an injury, it just hurt a lot. So I kept moving.

Then came KIMA, where you had to stop. Do you feel like you had a bad day?

I wouldn’t say it was a bad day.

I knew KIMA was very technical and that there was a chance my foot could become a problem. It felt really good at the beginning, but then I twisted it again and I didn’t want to risk being out for another six months, so I walked to the road and stopped.

But I still enjoyed being out there. It made me excited to get back to more technical running, and it was a good reminder to work on my weaknesses: more strength for my feet, more physio.

What has this season taught you?

Maybe that I should trust myself a little more.

Even though I haven’t raced so much in recent years, I still have a lot of experience behind me. I think I need to trust that my body knows what it’s doing.

And what are you taking into next year?

More confidence, I hope.

This season has been a good confirmation that even when I don’t feel like I’ve trained especially well, my base level is still pretty high.

So I feel motivated to see what happens if I can build on it.

Are you more afraid of failing yourself or failing other people?

Myself.

Now that I’m older, I can’t really be bothered thinking about what other people think. In general, people don’t care about me that much anyway. If they have an opinion, that’s up to them.

Les Templiers is a good example. People might see me there and think I should be top three. Maybe I’m fifth, sixth, or tenth and they think, Oh, maybe she isn’t that strong anymore. Maybe she had a bad race.

And I could be completely happy with it.

I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so excited to race now. I don’t really feel pressure from other people.

You’ve given yourself three more summers. What do you want to do with them?

I have a bucket list.

Hardrock has been on my mind since I started racing. To get there, I need a qualifier, and I’d also like to do UTMB once, just to experience the full loop.

Those are probably the two big races I still want to do.

And then I want to keep doing marathons and ultras around 80 kilometres along the way.

What does success look like to you in this season of your life?

For me, it’s a lot about having time.

Now that we have children, I find it really important, and beautiful, to be able to spend time with them. I always imagined I’d spend a lot of time with my kids. I don’t want to leave them at seven in the morning and pick them up at six in the evening.

Kilian and I want to have a good everyday life with our girls. We want time, patience and energy as a family.

I’ve always known I wanted a slower life. I don’t think the way society works today is necessarily healthy for families or relationships. Living close to nature has always been important to me too. Having time, having relationships with the people around me, having good values for my children, doing something meaningful.

And meaningful can be many things. Just being there for my children is very meaningful.

So success isn’t only what happens in a race. The whole picture has to work. The road there has to be worth it.

Do you choose that kind of success over being the best athlete you could possibly be?

I think, in a way, we already do.

We live in a small place close to nature. We don’t have easy access to sports doctors, physios or all the support centres that could help us as professional athletes.

So our lifestyle is already making that choice to some extent.

Of course, we still want to combine it with being professional athletes. It’s a hard question. But I think the way we live already says something about our priorities.