Left: Garth with his medal for finishing. Right: With friend Lay and daughter Kiri. Photo: Supplied: Kiri Barfoot
It defeated him in 2023 but octogenarian Garth Barfoot was determined to finish this year's New York marathon.
Of the more than 800 marathons that take place each year, just six are considered a world marathon major, with New York's among them.
At 88, Barfoot has quite the track record: the former real estate agent has competed in triathlons for more than 30 years, he's also Patron of Triathlon New Zealand and a life member of the North Harbour Triathlon Club.
He was the oldest competitor among his age group of 80 year olds on Monday (New Zealand time), running the race with his daughter Kiri and a running friend Lay Cunningham - herself 73 with 52 marathons under her belt.
He finished in 11 hours, 29 minutes and 49 seconds.
"I've had to get up on race day at 4 o'clock in the morning ... even though I wasn't going to start until quarter past nine," Barfoot told Nine to Noon.
"When you get 53,000 people in a race, the logistics are just horrific, but the people that have been doing it for 50 years or so, they're very good at it, and you've just gotta have faith in their organisation.
"But to a New Zealander, those crowds are just enormous."
Last time he fell out of the race before finishing because it was too cold for him - so this time around he came well prepared for the dip in temperatures in the afternoon.
"I just got so cold, because ... the air temperature by then was about 6 or 7 degrees.
"So this year, with three layers of thermal and two jackets, and that was of course more jackets than anyone else in the race [had], and that's where my friends came into it, Geri, my daughter, and Lay Cunningham, my pacer, and they carried jackets in their hands ... and then when it gets cooler ... that's when I put those jackets on.
"So I had altogether maybe four or five layers by the time I got to midnight, nearer to the finish line."
He's learnt that the actual and perceived temperatures were quite different, with the actual being 3 degrees Celsius and perceived being 1C at the time.
"That's literally freezing. It was pretty cold but ... when the time came to start, the sun got up and I was very happy at the start."
After moving into a retirement home, he found that entering a marathon helped regain a routine in his daily life, he said.
"People congratulate me even before I do anything, 'Oh, it's great that you're starting a marathon' Especially when they see how old I am.
"I don't know whether I do it for ego or not, but it's a mixture I suppose."
He had also taken to pilates, despite having thought of it initially as a "fantasy" type of exercise, he said.
"Finally, someone said to me right, you've got to do something, you're falling over too much and when you fall over you get injured ... people say when you're young you fall over, when you're old, you have a fall."
