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Let’s talk about mountains. What do they represent for you? I grew up in Barcelona and when I was 18 I decided to live in the mountains. Since then, I have had a constant connection with them and they have been my school in life. The mountains showed me how to feel free; they showed me their power and taught me to find mine. In difficult moments, when I’ve been injured and frustrated, they’ve showed me that they are always there with the same intensity and energy. The mountains have become a constant in my life. Constantly liberating me in my best moments and sheltering me in the worst. They have been a continuous source to help me learn more about myself. Are you always in a constant state of training? Mostly yes. My life is organized around training: where I live, my social life, and my work. Sometimes I wish it was not like this and I could think less about training, but knowing that I have races on the calendar or that I want to be in the best shape, my mind stays connected to training and it never switches off completely. There are periods of the year that I take it much more slowly. I also need to feel that slowness in sometimes, like I’m disconnecting and taking it easy, even if it’s not always true. What are your most essential tools for the winter season? I mainly use the Atomic Backland UL 65 because it is the ski that I’m most comfortable with. I love feeling light on the up and with the Backland UL 65 I also feel very comfortable on the down (if there’s not too much powder, of course!) I use these skis almost every day from the beginning of November to the end of April! In one winter I use four pairs of Backland UL 65 skis:- One pair for training- One pair for competing in individual and teams races- One special pair for the vertical races- One pair that I use for both training and competing.- Plus four pairs of Backland UL 65 skins. “I like to combine ski mountaineering with cross-country and alpine skiing because they are great ways to cross train.” I couldn’t train without my Suunto watches. I use mainly the Suunto Ambit3 Sport or the Spartan. My skimo program was created with four essentials: chrono, heart beat, altitude gain, and distance. I have been using Suunto watches for eight years now, and I always have it with me no matter the sport or the kind of training, because they always provide useful information!  What does confidence mean to you? Confidence is about trusting in yourself, trusting in your inner power, and knowing what you are capable of; it is accepting yourself as you are and taking the best of it, knowing that you are always in the right place doing the right thing. Confidence brings you so many positive emotions, which in return help you to see life in a positive way. What is the significance of your mountain community? I’ve found a beautiful community that is based on the experiences and sharing of the mountains. Within the mountain community I’ve found my many of my best friends and my second family. #sheskis is a movement connecting skiers around the world. Skiing more confidently than we thought we could and crashing more than we should. We are a community of skiers, united by our love for skiing.    READ MORE Greg Hill's mountain rules 7 tips to keep a balanced training load

Emelie Forsberg is not originally from the mountains – she’s from the hills. She was born in a hilly area on the east coast of Sweden called Höga Kusten. “There are no mountains, but the terrain is really playful with 300-meter-high hills,” Emelie says. Still she has become one of the world’s top mountain runners and ski mountaineers. How to do that? Do you actually need mountains to train for the climbs? Actually, not at all! If you have an uphill that is just 100 or 200 meters high – or even only 30 meters high – that’s ok. You just need to do more repetitions. But if you like mountains, I think it is important to also go to the mountains to train in the long climbs. Do you prefer more mellow or steep ascents? I like them both, because they are so different. I am quite powerful so the steeper climbs normally are a little better for me. But I have improved on the less intense climbs, too. When setting a skin track, do you head straight up or…? I did go really steep in the beginning! I was strong but didn’t really have the proper technique then. But now I like to set the track in a more mellow, comfortable angle. How do you pace yourself in the long uphills? First of all, I listen to my body because I think it is interesting to learn about my body. In training I always have my heart rate and analyse the data afterwards. That also helps me to understand my performance. But in some races, that are not so technical, I may have a more mathematical approach and use heart rate also while racing. I can just look at my heart rate I say: “No, this is not enough. I need to speed up!” Is training for uphill running and skimo the same? It’s more or less the same interval training that works for both. Maybe I train little shorter intervals in the winter. But all intervals are important for me; from one minute efforts, where I can really feel the lactic acid coming, to more manageable four minute efforts and up to ten minutes where it is like race pace. Interval training can be super fun. When you feel that you are in a good running form does that mean you are fast on skis, too? If I am in good shape for running, I think it is easier to transition to skiing. Going from skiing to running feels harder. Tips for increasing uphill speed? My tips are really basic, and more mental than physical: You need to like what you are doing and have continuation in what you are doing. Not to train super hard one week and then have three weeks without any training. Even if you only have time to run for ten minutes one day, go for that! It’s going to make you want to go out the other day, too. And try to make training a pleasure. For me interval training has really worked. It’s an easy way to improve because the sessions are manageable. The workout can be like one, one and a half hours, and you really feel like you have done something really good when you finish.   READ MORE World Vertical Week 2017 7 tips to keep a balanced training load How to run a sub-3h marathon

It’s not suppose to hurt your ears When I was a kid I dreamed about diving, but my ears and sinuses screamed in pain – but when you take a Scuba class you learn to equalize naturally. Diving should never be painful. Your ears hurt because of the effects of pressure – the volume of air spaces within your body are compressed by water pressure over your head. You need to adjust that change with equalization. You’re not breathing what you breath on land Most people mistakenly assume there’s an oxygen tank on your back. You’re not breathing oxgygen, you’re breathing what you’d breath on land, and that's 21% percent oxygen, 79% nitrogen and a few trace gasses – but it’s dried, filtered clean, and compressed. Technical divers may use exotic gasses like helium to conduct dives at much deeper levels, but recreational divers just breath, well, normal air. How long can I stay under water, really? That’s a tough questions! There’s a lot of factors that limit your dive. Important ones being how much air is in your tank and how deep you go. Recreational divers generally can ascend to the surface at any time during their dive with no need for de-compression stops on the way. Uhhh, what are decompression stops? Technical divers have an artificial ‘ceiling’ over their heads (or sometimes a real one). Artificial ceilings are created when you go deep or very long, and your body needs to time climatize and release gasses that have accumulated in the body. If you go higher, faster, you could get injured – it’s called decompression sickness (colloquially known as 'the bends’) and trust me, you don’t want to deal with it – symptoms include joint pain, headaches, neurological damage, even paralysis. But let me be clear: this is totally, 100% avoidable. How safe is diving? Statistically, diving is incredibly safe if you’re following the rules and know what’s going on. You’re more likely to suffer a fatal bowling injury! But you need to follow the sea conditions and weather, and follow the basic safety rules you learned in dive class. Will my whole body wrinkle up like my fingers after too long in the pool? Ha! That’s great, but no. You won’t come out looking like a prune. What’s a dive algorithm? A dive algorithm is a complex mathematical formula that attempts to simulate how the human body deals with the inert gas in scuba diving on descent and during the dive. It predicts how the body will off-gas that same inert gas to allow us to find the proper schedule for a safe ascent back to the surface. See the above statement about ‘decompression stops’. Give us a sample dive profile? A ‘dive profile’ is basically a map of how deep you go when (and for how long) during a dive. A rec-diver going to 30m of depth has only of 20min of bottom time before they ascend back to the surface with no safety stops. Alternatively, tech divers will spends hours at 30m, using rebreathers and different gasses to complete that dive, and they’ll have a number of decompression stops to come back to the surface. Are there any long-term effects? The current algorithms keep us in the safe envelope of exposure. I’ve got 7,000 dives, and sometimes am on projects that extend for months, diving every single day. Researchers are still looking at us (by that I mean people like me!) to see if there’s any long term effects. Decompression stress – the same thing that astronauts deal with, just on lesser levels – is of great interest to physiologists – there’s a lot of questions about how that stress expresses itself on bones or tissue over very long periods of time. But I’m 52 years old, and can still swim circles around most 20 year olds, so I’m not too worried for the long run! Stay tuned for more articles about the science of diving. READ MORE Explore a frozen world with Jill Heinerth How deep can we go?

There’s about 67,000 feet (over 20,000m) of ascent Which you cover over the course of two and a half days– if you can keep going that long, of course. And for better or worse, the course isn’t an A-to-B – it’s a loop that you do 5 times. Thus, the ‘Barkley Marathons’. Gary at the yellow gate that marks the start and the finish of the Barkley Marathons course. The race is one hundred and thirty something miles No one knows for sure – the route evolves every year at the whim of the race organizer​. If there are no finishers the course stays the same, if there is a finisher the course is made more difficult by adding another checkpoint that involves an additional climb and descent. Most think the loop, done 5 times, is a bit longer than an actual marathon​ ​, and there’s no question the terrain is absolutely brutal. Only 14 people have finished the race in nearly​ thirty years​ And what’s worse – every time there’s a finisher, they make the course harder​ but not necessarily​ and longer. Oh, there’s no trail markers A huge part of the challenge is to navigate the race course. To prove you’ve completed the whole course, you tear a page out of books you find hidden at various points along the race route. After every lap, the organizer will count your pages. You have no idea when the race will start Anytime between midnight Friday and noon on​ Saturday​! So it’s tough to plan your rest before the race. The race takes two and a half days. How do you train? You go up I live in Vancouver, BC, and we’ve got three peaks right in town, each of them claiming about 3,000 feet of prominence. I do a couple laps at a time for 20k vert training session about once every seven days – that takes about twelve hours. The other days of the week I go out for a few thousand a day. ​In the final three weeks of training I'll likely do a 15,000ft workout, and maybe 2x 20,000ft. The 20k workout can take up to 12hrs. Other than that I do at least one near daily lap and attempt to get my overall weekly vertical up to at least 30k ft​. What’s in the pack for a 20k climb? The way the race is set up, racers can return to​ a campground​ (where their cars are parked) at the start line at the finish of every loop. So that’s how I do my training – I can access my vehicle twice​ during a long training session​ a​ ​day. I’ll bring a water for three hours, food for 12 hours, and gear like a waterproof breathable kit, shirt, gloves, micro spikes for snow. I need 250 calories an hour ​Running is a calorie deficient sport and you can only digest so many calories while moving. 250 per hour is the formula for success. ​With that, you should be able to move forward, so that’s what I’ll do during the race. After​ each lap​ (about 8 - 10 hours, I’ll ​quickly down about 500 calories ​go for a full meal, then reset, then get going again. Liquid intake is totally dependent on weather – if it’s hot, more water. Cold, less. You need two pairs of shoes I do most hundred-milers in one pair of shoes, but the brush and briars on the Barkley is so brutal that it just​ can tear​ shoes apart. ​​ Navigation skills are crucial to success in The Barkley. And you absolutely need a compass Having a map, compass, and the skills to use them is an absolute necessity. It also helps if you have a course veteran to glean knowledge from. Getting lost can mean the difference between finishing and not finishing. You have 60 hours, and clock doesn’t stop if you get lost. I love the weekly vertical totals on my Suunto My goal is to get as much vertical as possible. It’s the only way to prepare for this event. The watch shows you your daily and weekly vertical totals. My workout ENDS when I get as much vertical as I need – so my watch makes it easy. The weekly graph that is a great reference point I can’t get away from. It’s a daily reminder that if I don’t get out of my door, I’m not getting my vertical in, and I’m not training hard enough! Stay tuned during Suunto Vertical Week 2017, as Gary plans to put up​ over 60k vertical in just a two week stretch – and make sure to check out the Barkley Marathons documentary, now showing on Netflix.    All images: © Matt Trappe / Trappephoto.com

World Vertical Week will be held globally on February 27 – March 5. You can climb where ever and choose whichever human powered sport you want. Last year the biggest average ascents per Move were climbed in Switzerland, Austria and France. Ski touring and mountaineering led the highest average ascents for individual sports. Which countries and sports will lead the way this year? The only thing you need to do to participate is to make sure your country information in your Suunto App settings is correct. After that your ascent will automatically be calculated in your home country’s total figure. By the end of the week we’ll find out where in the world the real climbers live. Have fun! #VERTICALWEEK PHOTO CONTEST Share your Vertical Week experiences on Instagram or Facebook with #VerticalWeek for a chance to win a Suunto Spartan Ultra GPS watch. (Terms and conditions apply. Read them here.)   Read more How to enjoy the outdoors with your partner: a chat with Emelie Forsberg and Kilian Jornet Greg Hill's mountain rules 7 tips to accelerating your uphill speed

Who would have thought: a relationship interview with Kilian? Strange things happen on Valentine’s Day! But don’t worry, both Emelie and Kilian were ready to chat about the topic without hesitation. We caught up with them in Andorra, after the first ski mountaineering world cup races of the season where they both finished on the podium. Emelie and Kilian, do you train a lot with each other? Kilian: Maybe once a week we do a full training session together. The other days we often start and end at the same place and make loops. Emelie: Yes, we often start together but he will do more. Sometimes, if I want to do intervals, I ask him to go before, so he can make the tracks. But I often catch him so the intervals often aren’t super good. If he goes with me, he goes easy. Kilian: And if there’s a nice, more technical summit, we do it together and take a nice tour out. How has training together changed during the five years you have been together? K: I don’t think it has changed that much. We know each other a bit better now. We feel more comfortable if we see the other one wants to go faster or slower and we don’t always need to talk or say things. And when we go to more technical places, we know how the other is doing and reacting. I think that is mostly what has changed. E: Maybe now I ask you to do more intervals with me? Kilian can help me do well in the intervals. "Kilian can help me do well in the intervals." Are skiing and running together different? K: Skiing is always a bit more tricky. E: When you go running you don’t need to worry about avalanches. K: If we go to a summit with some climbing or some steep slopes with Emelie, my brain is working much more. It is not the same feeling when I am with my friends. With her I think more. I mean, when I am with my friends, I take good care, but am less stressed. E: Not me! I know that you will be fine! K: It’s not that I don’t care [when being out with friends] but the pressure is not the same! E: But you don’t need to feel that! K: I think it is just natural. What’s the difference in being out with your partner or your friends? E: When I go out with Kilian he’s always very comfortable. He takes the rope and everything. But when I go out with my friends, it’s often the opposite: I’m the one who is more comfortable. Talking about confidence, are there some activities you do together where Emelie is the one feeling more comfortable? K: Yea, one time we were swimming in a lake and I almost died. Then she was definitely more comfortable! E: We wanted to go to a mountain, but there was no trail, so we decided to swim. K: And it was a big, big lake. I don’t know how long, maybe four kilometres? Emelie needed to put some of our stuff, like the phone, on her head, like a turban not to get them wet. I was just looking for some wood or something to grab! E: And maybe when we go cross-country skiing, I am also more comfortable. But you never want to do that! You don’t want to feel uncomfortable! K: Oh, I like to feel uncomfortable – if I am in the mountains. If I am cross-country skiing I am only looking up to the mountains, but don’t go to the summits. E: But you go so much faster, just enjoy the speed and the surroundings! "Just enjoy the speed and the surroundings!" Emelie, do you carry a Clifbar with you so you can give it to Kilian when he starts to get grumpy? E: He doesn’t like to eat when he is out! I take some food with me when I am out longer, like eight hours. And sometimes I wish that Kilian had some. I have been telling him that why can’t he have some chocolate in his backpack for me. Just in case. But it has not happened so far. So, I often take my own. K: But some days in the mountains I take food – and water. Is finding a schedule that works for both of you hard? E: I think we are spending much more time with each other than many other couples since we don’t go to work from nine to five every day. K: There can be like a month when I go on an expedition or you go to a race in the US but… It would be hard if the other one wouldn’t do this. We don’t stay at home all that long. But we are both travelling – and doing it also together. Are there some things you don’t do together? K: She really wants to do base jumping, but I have told her she really shouldn’t do that. E: No! I hate base jumping. It’s playing with your precious life. K: (Seriously). I think we both have the confidence to say when we feel uncomfortable. She’s very good at that, I am worse. If I see the summit close but the conditions are so-so, I can be pushing more, but Emelie can still say, no, it does matter, we go down. E: And Kilian is very good, when he needs help with the rope. (general laughter) No, it was not a joke! K: You do yoga at home and I am really bad at that. I may do it for five minutes but then start doing something else. E: But you should really try it. K: I think it is really important for the body, but it is hard when I am at home. E: Yea, but you won’t follow me to the gym either where they have a really nice yoga studio. I've even asked you because I need practice. (Ed. note: Emelie is a certified yoga teacher.) I should have given you ten yoga lessons as a Christmas present! "I should have given you ten yoga lessons as a Christmas present!" Any tips or learnings you wish to share with other outdoor couples? E: I’ve heard that many couples don’t like to be out with each other because they’ll get angry. I think in that case they push themselves to where they don’t want to be. But if you really know the other one’s limits and your own limits – and are able to talk about them – then it’ll be better. K: Maybe you plan one day that you don’t have any expectations. You just go out together and enjoy the company. Not like “I want to run 10K or do this or that”. E: It is important to make it nice when you are out together. It is such a nice way to spend time. Try to make it nice and comfortable. It can be good for your partner to know what are the reasons for you to go out together. READ MORE Meet the endurance super-couple aiming to do 100 triathlons in 100 days Kilian's Everest Dream Lives On