Irish Olympian Mick Clohisey yesterday won the Belfast City Marathon as the largest crowd gathered in Ireland since the Coronavirus pandemic restricted us to our homes in March last year.
The Dublin runner crossed the finish line at Ormeau Park in two hours and 20 minutes.
He ran the London Marathon in 2017 in two hours and 16 minutes and has represented Ireland on 12 occasions in the European Cross Country championships.
Fionnuala Ross, from Armagh, won the women's race in two hours and 43 minutes.
More than 5,700 runners took part in the event, the first held in the city since 2019.
The event normally takes part in May but had been delayed until October due to coronavirus restrictions.
It began at 9am on Prince of Wales Avenue in the Stormont Estate and took the runners throughout east, north, west and south Belfast, covering a total of 26.2 miles.
As well as the main marathon, a relay and wheelchair race, following the same route, all took place along with a 2.5 mile fun run and eight mile walk.
John Allen, Chairman of the Belfast City Marathon, said it "wasn't quite clear whether we could go ahead or not for quite a while and to some extent we took a little bit of a risk in deciding it could go ahead,.
"It has been relatively more low-key because because of that slight risk," he said.
Mr Allen said there had been a high number of entrants as some runners had deferred from last year.
"They entered originally about a year or so ago and we had to move their entries forward," he said.
The marathon took place a day after the organisers had been criticised for the lengthy waits runners had to endure in order to pick up their race packs.
Usually posted out to entrants, this year, the packs had to be collected from Ormeau Park and on Saturday, there were large queues of people.
Posting on social media, organisers said they "sincerely" apologised for the lengthy waits experienced by many people.
"We accept that the service was significantly under-resourced and accept that the waiting times were totally unacceptable.
"Once the marathon is over we will be holding a full enquiry into what went wrong and will ensure that such waits are not experienced in future. Once again our full and sincere apologies to all affected".
Ulster Unionist councillor Louise McKinstry, from Banbridge, who had been due to take part in a 2.5km walk at Stormont with her two young children and husband, ended up having to leave the queue without her pack.
She said they would instead do their own walk.
She told the BBC: "We could not wait three or four hours with two small children in the cold to get to the top of the queue so we had to give up.
"I have emailed, phoned and sent messages to explain the situation but have not heard back so we are not able to take part. It is so disappointing."
It is not the first time the event has been criticised.
In 2019, organisers had to apologise after admitting the course was 0.3 miles longer than it should have been.
