I’M A RIDER HEATHER FELL

It’s out with horses, épées and pistols and in with bikes for this modern pentathlon silver medallist from the Beijing Olympics

You find a lot of men taking themselves seriously but most aren’t quite as good as they make out!

I rode John o’Groats to Land’s End [JOGLE] in 2013 after just three months of riding. I got the bike on 2 March and was riding the 1000 miles by early June. The longest ride I’d done up until that point was 70 miles, but this was an average of 109 a day for nine days. I just couldn’t get my head around the numbers. My total mileage ever on a bike up until that point didn’t add up to 1000!

Thankfully, it turned out to be the best experience ever. It was for the Deloitte Ride Across Britain ( rideacrossbritain.com). They take care of everything so I was free to concentrate on pedalling, eating and meeting new friends. I was gutted to finish. I could have carried on going, and was even back out on my bike the next day.

I wasn’t supposed to be doing JOGLE. The plan was just to join them [her JOGLE team, the Bath Rugby Foundation] for a day. But I lost my athlete funding during that period and didn’t really know what I was doing. I’m one of those people who needs a focus and this ride gave me that.

Road cycling is now being used by a lot of pentathletes as cross training. I turned up for my first ride in my running kit plus a helmet – I had no idea. I’d been keen to cycle with friends, so I joined them on my mountain bike.

My new team is all about showing cycling can be accessible for women. There are five of us in the Cannondale Girls team, we’re just not a team in the traditional sense. We all do our different things. Some ride the track, some downhill mountain bike, some ride road, others do cyclo-cross. Some have more than one string to their bow. I’ve come in on the road side, in time trials and triathlon, but I’m still really new to this sport. I’m putting myself out there and trying new things.

Part of the reason why I’m passionate about Cannondale Girls is that I was

quite intimidated by the road cycling scene to begin with. You find a lot of men taking themselves seriously but most of them aren’t quite as good as they make out! When I started I didn’t know any of the etiquette. I couldn’t - and this sounds quite silly now - comprehend how you could balance on those skinny wheels.

I’m passionate about showing that the sport is open to anybody. My view is that if I was intimidated by it - without being complacent, someone who has competed in sport at the top level - then women who haven’t had that experience are likely to be even more intimidated.

Acclimatising to cycling was helped by the fact I was dropping everyone on the hills from the start. We were near Bath and heading towards this feared climb near Lacock called Bowden Hill. Everyone was building it up into this massive thing, but it wasn’t so bad.

I did my first Ironman in South Africa in April, and qualified for the Kona Worlds! This year was supposed to be about trying new things but I’m going to give it a go. I’ve just had a bike fit done with former Swedish pro rider, Magnus Bäckstedt, he knows a bit about Ironman. I’m also an ambassador to a sportive series which includes Bike Bath.

Riding horses has lots in common with cycling. Okay, so you have more control over what your bike is doing but in terms of the position and necessary core strength, there’s lots of overlap.

My commentary work takes me all over the world, which is perfect for my new hobby. I do a fair amount of work for modern pentathlon’s governing body’s channel. I was also in Rio last summer for the Olympics and Paralympics. I didn’t do any cycling but realised after that how important power-to-weight is. I lost lots of weight so when I got back, even though I wasn’t that fit, I was flying up the hills in comparison to my previous attempts.