Harry Burnard ran his best ever marathon yesterday, but he won't be back running for a while.
The 20-year-old made a split-second decision to take his shoes off halfway through the Auckland Marathon after a knee injury he had suffered during training started playing up.
"I started off [the marathon] feeling pretty good. I had taken the week off and it seemed to have gone away but about 12km in it started to come back.
"So I dropped off the leader's group - it was just after we crossed the Harbour Bridge.
"I thought I might fix it by taking off my shoes so I did that and handed them to a spectator...I ran the rest of the race barefoot. It was about 24km."