Olympian Paul Pollock leads the entries for Sunday’s 40th anniversary running of the Belfast City Marathon with Maghera man Tommy Hughes aiming to better his own over-60s world record.
Pollock, 35, filed a late entry this week after dropping out of the recent Rotterdam Marathon at around 30kms.
The twice Olympic athlete does not yet have a qualifying time for any of this year’s three major championships.
His first target will be the European Championship standard of 2:14.30.
Another twice Olympian Kevin Seaward (2:11.54) and Hugh Armstrong (2:14.02) have already achieved that and have been selected for the championships although Belfast man Seaward has indicated that his target for the summer is the Commonwealth Games marathon in Birmingham rather than the Munich tests.
The Commonwealth Games qualifying standard is a tougher 2:13.00 although still some 2 minutes and 35 seconds slower than Pollock’s personal best set of 2:10.25 at the Valencia Marathon in late 2019.
At present, no Irishman has achieved the World Championship marathon standard of 2:11.30, with Seaward leading the 2022 Irish rankings at the moment with his performance in Manchester four weeks ago.
Hughes to be paced by son Eoin
The evergreen Hughes, meanwhile, will continue his quest to become the first over-60s runner to better two hours and 30 minutes for the 26-mile distance.
The 1992 Barcelona Olympian, who is now 62, was only two seconds outside the mark when winning the Down Royal Marathon in Northern Ireland in October 2020.
But with his son Eoin, who achieved the father and son combined world record of 4:59.22 with Tommy in Frankfurt last year, set to pace him for the opening 15 miles, the county Derryman will have high hopes of achieving yet another age group world mark.
After starting at 09:00 BST from Prince of Wales Avenue at Stormont, the 26.2 mile-long (42.1 km) race will take runners across east, north, west and south Belfast, before finishing in Ormeau Park.
Roads along the route will be closed from 06:00 and reopen again once all runners have passed.
A relay and wheelchair race will follow the same route as the marathon, and there is also an eight mile (12.8km) walk.
The event is returning to its traditional date during the May Day bank holiday weekend for the first time in three years.
However, this is the first Sunday running of the event on the bank holiday weekend with organisers believing that long-term, this will attract more competitors to the event.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to the scrapping of the 2020 race although it did return to the calendar in early October last year, when the event took place on a Sunday.
