Englishman Martin Clifford, from Nottingham, was joined by runners from Japan, Hong Kong, Ireland and Australia.
Clifford (41), a service engineer, decided to look for any September marathons in New Zealand, as he was thinking of planning his four-week holiday around a run.
Although he only completed his first marathon 12 months ago, when contesting his local Nottingham event and finishing in 3hr 28min, Clifford was tempted by the idea of doing one outside the European circuit.
"It's all about having a T-shirt that no-one else has," he said.
When signing on for the Dunedin marathon, Clifford was led to believe the course was flat.
"They fibbed to me. It was sheer torture at the end."
Whether it was Clifford's running background or his past triathlon endeavours, despite the undulation of the course he still managed to better his Nottingham time by 11min, completing yesterday's course in 3hr 17min 44sec.
Now smitten by the marathon bug, Clifford is tempted to run the Leicester marathon on his return to England.
"I'll just have to wait and see how the recovery goes. But it sure is tempting."
Quirk (34), who works in hospitality, was educated at Kavanagh College and has been based in Melbourne for the past two years.
He decided to give the Melbourne marathon an attempt not long after arriving in 2008.
The closest he had come to competing in a marathon before was the Dunedin event as a 13-year-old when he contested the half-marathon section.
He became hooked after completing the Melbourne event in 3hr 3min, in a field of 4000 contesting the 42.2km marathon distance, and in an event that boasted a combined field of 20,000.
"That's just four weeks away," he said of this year's Melbourne marathon.
"But I've decided to give this a go instead. They say you should only do one a year."
Quirk missed returning to last year's Melbourne course because of an injury that required arthroscopic surgery to remove loose fragments from around his ankle.
"One doctor I saw said I'd never run another marathon."
Quirk found yesterday's marathon terrain vastly different from that experienced in Melbourne, but he still managed to finish third overall in 2hr 53min 47sec.
