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

JUST hours after completing my last Times column we were due to start our journey home from Brazil. Unfortunately due to our previous itinerary this meant heading backwards across to the USA for a connecting flight from New York.

This journey seemed long enough — especially compared to one of our team members who only competed in the Rio ed Janiero, Brazil for the World Cup and therefore had a direct BA flight home - so you can imagine how our hearts sank when we arrived at the airport to discover a 'minimum 12 hour delay' on our first flight.

Being in good spirits we all laughed at this situation and just hoped we could return to our hotel for the night, however things turned for the better. It isn't very often that as a result of a delay you return home earlier, but luck was on our side. Courtesy of BA we were transferred onto the direct flight that left a couple of hours later but returned us to home soil a whole eight hours early.

It has been a busy weekend of sport for me, both as a participant and a spectator. I managed to fit in a 5K park running race on Saturday followed by a full day at a swimming meet on Sunday. It really was perfect conditions for sport this weekend, which certainly made the acclimatisation after Brazil quite easy.

It is this time of year when rugby almost seems out of season but there were enough games on Saturday to keep me entertained. I had the honour of being invited onto the commentary panel for Varsity game between Exeter and Bath Universities for which I think I managed to feign an adequate knowledge of the sport.

However, I cannot fail to mention the brilliant and significant away victory to Exeter Chiefs against Gloucester, what a season they are having.