Miles To Run, Promises to Keep

Ian O’Riordan, athletics correspondent for The Irish Times will unveil his book ‘Miles to Run, Promises to Keep –Strange adventures of the distance runner’ at the Marathon EXPO this weekend. Part commentary, part training manual, part travelogue, and all about running, this book is the product of a decade of Ian O’Riordan’s athletics reporting for The Irish Times.

Insightful, inspiring, and hugely entertaining reading for distance runners of all abilities, it captures the motivations and aspirations and sometimes even the folly of running – whether that be in the Olympic Games or the local 10km road race. With a wide range of revealing encounters, including Ronnie Delany and Roger Bannister, John Treacy and Sonia O’Sullivan and Eamonn Coghlan, and Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat, this is a personal study of distance running in all its glory and apparent madness.

From miles to marathons and everything in between, it is an honest and fascinating and often strange adventure. And now that running has become a sort of morphine for the masses, Miles to Run, Promises to Keep also attempts to answer one of the profound questions of our age: Why do we run? The answer lies somewhere beyond The Wall and over The Edge.

About the author: Ian O’Riordan is athletics correspondent for The Irish Times. He was born in Dublin, ran for Ireland as a junior, and spent four years on a running scholarship at Brown University in the US. He has run several marathons, including Athens, New York and Honolulu.


Ian will be at the EXPO on Saturday and Sunday selling/signing copies of his book which retails at €15.00.