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Hi all, Congrats to everyone who took part. I've a few photos from the Belfast marathon . I was at the 24 mile marker for about an hour and a half until all my cards were full. Hopefully I managed to catch a few people here in that time.

Hello,

You can find some pictures on RacePix.com

London Marathon photos on RacePix

A fair few of the photos are mine but more and more have been added by other people over the course of today and yesterday. I was at about 22 miles so there are a few tired runners in there...

Hopefully I managed to get some of you,

Darren

Hey, quick questions about this race as I'm toying between it and another marathon in May, very grateful for any responses...

 What's the course like in terms of road, pavement, cobblestones? I saw a few pics that had the runners on cobblestones and I was wondering how long they went on for. Other pictures appeared to have the runners coming off a footpath.

Secondly, the water stations - are they water bottles are paper/plastic cups? Not really a deal breaker here but just curious!

Thanks...

Grendel, Alex has yet to prove his times though. It's all well and good saying "I had a test that says I'm capable of running 2.30", he still has to run that time! If I'm not mistaken his PB is around 2.58?

In relation to your point about Boston paininthefoot. Different Olympic Councils have different rules for qualification. For example I think the UK has an A standard of 2:11 where a lot of countries have the A standard of 2:15. The Kenyans may have accepted the qualifying time of their athlete based on his Chicago marathon. As they have so many runners reaching the standard they can then pick and choose the team they think is strongest. This is just a guess on my part but the list of courses set out can be found here

Re: Tomas Abyu in Dublin

 I don't think it was because the course wasn't ratified. It wasn't on the list of courses you could achieve an Olympic Qualification which the IAAF posts out and anybody can get access to the list. The Boston marathon also isn't on this list.

If you want to make a qualification attempt as far as I'm aware you've to tell someone I suppose in UK athletics that you're making the attempt a few days prior. Now if he had have told someone surely they'd have said "that course isn't on the list, it won't count" and he wouldn't have raced it. Instead it appears he got the time and then told them he got it and they pointed out that he was meant to tell them before hand and the course isn't on the list. All a bit stupid really - a quick google would have told him not to race it!