James Milner took on the New York marathon at the weekend, and the former Liverpool and Manchester City midfielder produced an impressive time on his debut at the distance

Former England and Liverpool star James Milner swapped his football boots for running shoes and finished the New York Marathon in an impressive three hours, nine minutes and four seconds. The Premier League's metronome averaged seven minutes and 12 seconds per mile to complete his first world major.

Milner ended a more than 20-year career over the summer and has spent some time seeing how his supreme football fitness translates to running. The 40-year-old produced a stunning time on a course that is better known for its hills rather than its fast times.

The ex-Newcastle, Leeds, Brighton, Aston Villa and Manchester City ace could not match the marks already set by Arjen Robben, who clocked two hours and 58 minutes in Rotterdam or Aaron Ramsey's two hours and 59 minutes in Stockholm, but both took more than three hours on their first efforts too.

Make sure you don't miss sport's biggest stories and breaking news by making the Daily Mirror one of your Google preferred sources.

Milner was notorious for going unbeaten in Liverpool's infamous lactate threshold sessions in pre-season, where players would inevitably run until they couldn't any more, and had some childhood pedigree in cross-country.

Speaking ahead of participating in his debut marathon, Milner revealed that he'd been stopped from running during pre-season in the latter stages of his career. So his first challenge was 'building up the mileage without getting injured'.

Milner added that he would have been confident of achieving more while he was still playing football. "A few years ago, I feel like I could have definitely done sub-3:00," he said.

"My career went on longer and longer. Two years ago, I had a knee operation, and when I woke up from the knee operation, I couldn’t lift my foot. And I had a second operation that day to check, and then I couldn’t lift my foot for six months. I had nerve damage.

"So I feel to go from not being able to walk properly and maybe never being able to walk to coming back, playing football in the Premier League, and hopefully potentially finishing a marathon, I don’t want to get too much caught up on the time."

Milner stuck true to his word that he would go out fast and attempt to hang on, rather than attempting a more measured race. He completed the first half in one hour 31 minutes and battled to complete the second half in one hour 38 minutes.

Despite a pacey effort from Milner, he was still well short of the elite calibre of marathon racers. Fellow debutant Andreas Almgren, 31, won the race in two hours, six minutes and one second, having claimed European 10,000m gold in the summer.

He beat Italy's Yemaneberhan Crippa by 13 seconds, while Lesotho's Kamohelo Mofolo finished 12 seconds further back.

The women's race saw Kenya's Sheila Chepkirui claim her second New York Marathon title, finishing in two hours 24 minutes and 36 seconds. The 35-year-old defeated US star Jessica McClain, who produced an outstanding finish to come from behind to pip Kenya's Hellen Obiri by a second.