Ciara Mageean: 'It is a very strange thing to be 34 and face the fact of your mortality'

Over the past week, Mageean has been inundated with goodwill while making public appearances to promote her book, My Greatest Race – a powerful, uplifting story that she wrote with Clíona Foley.

Ireland's Ciara Mageean celebrates winning the women's 1500m final during day three of the 2024 European Athletics Championships. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile.

While sifting through the wreckage of the Paris Olympics, which Ciara Mageean was forced to withdraw from at the 11th hour due to injury, she found herself sitting in the home of British psychiatrist Steve Peters.

Peters’ most famous work surrounds The Chimp Paradox, a model that breaks the mind into parts. There’s the rational, logical human. There’s the computer that stores memories and runs its autopilot system. Then there’s the chimp, or limbic system, which governs emotional impulses.