THE altitude camps in the lead-up to major championships are, admits Joanna Muir, tough going. They are, however, a necessary evil and the 22 year-old’s most recent camp in France has added the finishing touches to her preparations for the World Modern Pentathlon Championships, which begin in Cairo on Tuesday.

Britain has a proud pedigree in modern pentathlon, which includes fencing, swimming, show-jumping, shooting and running, and in the past couple of years, Muir has established herself as the leading Scot in the British team.

She will head to the World Championships as part of a four-strong women’s team, which also includes Olympic silver medallist Sam Murray and World Cup winner, Kate French, with high hopes of making a real mark on the event.

Despite only breaking into the senior ranks in the past few years, Muir already has a World Championship medal to her name having taken silver in the team relay alongside Murray at last year’s event. This year, however, GB will not contest the relay so Muir’s sole focus will be the individual event.

“I’m really looking forward to it and I’m feeling good,” says the Bath-based athlete.

“We had a camp in Paris which was fencing focused and then an altitude camp which was geared towards really getting my swimming and running right.

“When you get everything right, this is the best sport ever but when it goes wrong, it’s just the worst thing. So many things need to go right on the day to have a good competition and so you really need to have a lot of discipline.”

With pentathlon having so many variables it is, says Muir, impossible to predict how any given competition will pan out. But having finished in the top 40 at the 2016 World Championships, the Dumfries athlete is looking for an improvement on that result this year.

“It’s hard to make specific goals because there’s so many different aspects to the sport and so that means there’s so many things that can go wrong,” she says.

“I would love to make the top ten but I know that will be really tough. After the Olympics, a lot of the top athletes had a break and they’re all coming back for the world champs so the field will be really strong and the competition will be so tough.”

The last few years have been something of a rollercoaster for Muir.

A lengthy enforced break in 2015 due to a stress fracture in her foot threw her entire year off track and while such a long lay-off was, admits Muir, difficult to take, a number of positives emerged from the situation.

“It was hard – loads of rehab and hours and hours on the bike which was horrendous,” she says. “Some good did come out of it though and it definitely showed me how much I wanted it. It was a really tough time but being able to push through and come out of the other side definitely made me stronger.”

Muir certainly did come back stronger and finished in an impressive fifth place in last summer’s European Championships, a result which underlined her impressive potential.

A concussion earlier this season meant that the past few months have not been plain sailing either but a top ten finish in the World Cup event in Poland, a first for Muir, was a significant milestone.

Muir admits that when she first discovered pentathlon, she could barely have imagined making a career of it.

Her first taste of the sport was through Pony Club triathlon, which includes running, swimming, shooting and horse-riding but it was taking part in a schools competition at the national training centre in Bath that gave her the drive to become an elite pentathlete.

“I remember being at a competition in Bath where all the GB athletes trained and thinking that it would be amazing to be there myself,” she says. “I just fell in love with Bath and the idea of being an athlete.”

With GB one of the dominant nations in modern pentathlon, there could be no better place to be based and Muir admits that not only does training alongside world and Olympic medallists increase the speed of her development, it also gives her the belief that reaching the very top of her sport is a realistic and achievable goal.

“We’re really lucky to have the set-up we have,” she says. “It’s fantastic to be able to train with the athletes that I do and there’s also a good group of younger athletes coming through so we all push each other on.

“Training with athletes who have won Olympic medals definitely makes the prospect of doing it myself much more realistic.”

The 2020 Olympic Games may still be almost three years three away but already, Muir has one eye on Tokyo. Securing a spot in the British team will not be an easy task but it is a challenge that Muir is relishing.

“It feels like it’s really not that far away already,” she says. “In 2019, the European Championships are being held in Bath??? and that’s the qualifier for the Olympics so when you think that’s only two years away, it’s really not long.

“That’s really exciting though and so hopefully I’ll just continue to improve as that comes closer.”