Andreas Almgren's career has been marred by injuries, he has trained harder than his body can handle. Now he has made great progress. Last season he smashed the Swedish record in the 5,000 meters and at the beginning of this year's season he set the Swedish record in the 3,000 meters.

Can you say that you have matured as an athlete?

– Yes, you have to say that, matured and that you feel more confident in the decisions, because I know that it is the big picture that makes you run well, not these individual sessions that you were more into before, says Almgren to SVT Sport and continues:

"If I missed a training session before, I could get incredibly stressed because I didn't fully follow the plan, it's better to skip three sessions so you don't have to get injured for eight weeks instead.

Have you learned the hard way?

"I've taken a bit too hard a road, you might think. I had seven years between the 2015 World Cup and Euro 2022 where I didn't run any championships, so I might not recommend everyone to take that particular path, but to have some setbacks I think strengthens everyone.

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Andreas Almgren will run for 13 minutes

"Have significantly higher ambitions"

At the Diamond League in Florence last week, Almgren was on his way to a new Swedish record in the 5,000 meters, but fell at the penultimate corner.

"I had pain in one foot because I sprained it a bit, and a little sore in the other foot because it was scratched up by Mohamed's (Ahmed, runner from Canada) nails.

The very next day, Almgren was able to run. At the time of writing, he has averaged 30 kilometers of running per day, for the past three days. Almgren holds the Swedish record in the 5,000 meters in 13:01.07. Walking under 13 minutes is for many a dream limit.

"You could say that I have much higher ambitions than just going under 13. It's easy to speculate, but I think I would have ended up somewhere around 12.55 in that race, because I had a lot of power left on the last lap.