Paula Radcliffe will take time out to decide whether her pitted path to fourth place in the New York Marathon on Sunday was a wake-up call or mere bad luck.

“Maybe I need to take a long break now and just sort of recharge everything,” she said as she reflected on being beaten by Derartu Tulu, the Ethiopian legend who plagued her early career. “But I don’t feel my body is falling apart. I knew it was a risk coming in and I will have to live with that now.”

The marathon world record-holder remains an intoxicating mix of courage and vulnerability. Her body let her down in New York, just as it had at the Olympics in Beijing last year and Athens in 2004.

There have still been some lipsmacking highs, exclusively in New York in recent times, but there have also been two stress fractures of the lower spine, one of the left femur and, in recent months, problems with both hamstrings.