SSE Airtricity Dublin Marathon winner in 2016 and AAI national marathon champion Laura Graham of Mourne Runners has won the Belfast Marathon – a home victory for the first time in 19 years. Graham, supported enthusiastically all around the course, also repeated her feat of last year by running the London and then Belfast Marathons with only seven days rest in between.
The time was marginally quicker than the 2:41.54 Graham ran to win the national title at Dublin last October and an improvement on her 2:42.38 in London last weekend. Last year, Graham finished second in Belfast behind Berhan Gebremichael from Ethiopia clocking a time of 2:48.56. A week earlier, she had finished the London Marathon in 2:48.03.