Britain's 38-year-old world marathon record holder, who had been hoping to finish in around 69 minutes as part of her preparation for London 2012, where she will seek her first medal at the Games after three ill-fated attempts, had suffered from bronchitis in the fortnight before the race and had only come off antibiotics the day before.

"My legs just felt empty," she said.

"There was no turnover there at all and I was just fighting it.

"It's not as if there aren't reasons, but even so I couldn't have expected it to make that much difference.

"It is really concerning.

"I knew I wasn't coming into the race in PB (personal best) shape but I didn't expect it to feel that bad.

"It was a kind of lonely run.

"I was just trying to mentally switch off and keep going."

After Radcliffe crossed the line she crouched, exhausted, before apologising to the race director for her performance in an event where she had started with a 7:52 advantage over Ethiopia's multiple world and Olympic champion Haile Gebrselassie, also 38, who passed her at the three-quarter mark and finished in 61:52.

"Sometimes there are good days and some days there are bad days; maybe today was just a bad day for Paula," said Gebrselassie, who has given up hope of making another Olympics himself this year.

"She is a fantastic runner, but she was not fantastic today.

"The gap between me and Paula was okay until about 8km, but somewhere around 12km she was slower.

"Every kilometre she was slower than me by about 30 or 35 seconds.

"At the beginning my calculation was that I was going to catch her at about 20km but I knew Paula must be ill when I saw her going that slowly."

Radcliffe, asked about her realistic ambitions on the day before the race, had eventually responded: "I would be happy with an Olympic bronze.

"What I don't have is an Olympic medal."

"It [Vienna] should have been a test for the Olympics," Radcliffe added.

"But it wasn't a real test in the end.

"The plan now was always to take a week easy and I think I need to take that week now to recover properly and get back to being fully healthy again before I start heavy marathon training."

The Vienna City marathon was won by Kenya's Henry Sugut in 2 hours 06min 58sec, while Fate Tola of Ethiopia defended her title in a time of 2:26:39.

Sugut significantly improved the course record of 2:07.38 set in 2008 set by his fellow countryman Abel Kirui, the current world champion.

In fine but partly windy weather conditions the organisers of the Vienna City Marathon registered a record total of 36,157 runners.

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