Paula Radcliffe insisted that her latest injury is nothing serious after struggling home in fourth place in the ING New York City Marathon. “It will just go with rest,” she said.

Everyone hopes so. Radcliffe developed a problem behind her left knee a fortnight ago. She had a cortisone injection on Friday and hoped for the best. “It just went wrong at 11 miles,” Radcliffe said. “For the last miles I was just thinking, ‘Hang in there as long as you can — just stay with them.’ ” Radcliffe, 36 next month, said a scan had shown up no tear and that, had it done so, she would have pulled out beforehand.

The suggestion of Charles van Commenee, the UK Athletics head coach, had been that Radcliffe write off the year and come back when she was stronger. But Radcliffe, frustrated by her lack of racing, was desperate to keep on running.

“I knew it was a risk and maybe if I’d had a good year’s racing then I wouldn’t have taken it,” she said. “But I don’t feel that I had a bad race and that’s the end of my career. I’ve had some bad luck this year, but I don’t think it’s because I’m old.”

The time was so slow that Radcliffe felt she might win if she could just survive, but her body let her down. She revealed that she even received encouragement from Derartu Tulu, the race winner from Ethiopia, when she hit trouble crossing the Queensboro Bridge. “She’s lovely,” Radcliffe said of the 37-year-old. “She’s waited so long and, even in the race, she was saying, ‘Come on Paula, come on, we can do this.’ I knew that if I stopped then I wouldn’t be able to get started again.”

It was a great day for the home crowd as Meb Keflezighi became the first American winner of the men’s race since Alberto Salazar in 1982.

He saw off a loaded field in a time of 2hr 9min 15sec, with Robert Cheruiyot, of Kenya, second and Jaouad Gharib, of Morocco, third. Ryan Hall, the American who had promised to give away his prize money, was fourth.