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

SO I presume everyone is now back into the routine. I'm back to training for all five sports again and my body is still complaining at the shock of returning to the saddle and fencing piste after three weeks away.

My intense fitness training over Christmas must have paid off though, as even with heavy, achy legs (and carrying a few extra pounds!) I managed a strong performance on Sunday. I was representing Devon in the South West cross-country championships and improved on my December performance, finishing the second place Devon athlete and sixth overall.

Having lived at home for over two weeks I've been spoilt with delicious home cooked food and a constant burning log fire. The only benefit of heading back to Bath for a week's training was to leave the many half-eaten boxes of chocolates behind. Therefore it came as a bit of challenge when I had to cook, not just for myself but for the workman as well. The first problem was finding something edible in my depleted fridge/freezer stores. It all started fine, having defrosted the sausages in the microwave. However, I then couldn't turn on the oven. After several attempts I decided to grill the sausages on the hob. All was going well until flames half a metre high were engulfing my bangers. After the panic the third and final stage was to finish them off in the frying pan. During all this my mixture of rice and the remaining ingredients of the fridge (known as improvisation!) had well and truly burnt to the bottom. The very polite workman cleaned up his plate but I think the ketchup played a vital part!

I have just discovered that my father is one builder less this week as a certain employee is suffering from food poisoning — apparently nothing to do with me.