West Devon's Heather Fell, Olympic modern pentathlete silver medalist, writes about her life 'on and off' the track.

HAVING left home Wednesday lunchtime - stopping on route for a few hours to see the sights of Hong Kong — I eventually arrived in Cheng Du, China by Thursday evening.

The bonus of not really sleeping on either flight meant I haven't really suffered any jet lag as I was out like a light at Chinese bedtime. Even so there was certainly no problem waking up the next morning because just after 8am there was the most almighty noise that sounded like gunfire. This went on for about a minute before I realised that there was no screaming and that I was probably safe to come out from my hiding place under the duvet.

At breakfast everyone revealed they had each woken in a mild panic and had momentarily forgotten where they were. We discovered this had been fireworks for a celebration - of what we didn't discover - but thankfully there has been nothing else to celebrate since!

The competition starts on Thursday but the coaching team decided to bring us out six days before-hand as it is the World Championships and the more time to acclimatise the better. The main aim of the first few days is to make sure you stay awake all day to adjust to the time difference. This close to a competition there's no point in doing any hard training so other than a bit of light training in the morning, I have been checking out Cheng Du.

The other three from the women's team and I weren't too impressed with the shops – and we do know our shops. We did, however, get rather excited by the incredibly cheap prices at the beautician so we're all now sporting manicured and intricately painted nails all for the equivalent of about £1.50 each.