Personal best for Matt Sharp at Berlin Marathon

Former World Under-23 Champion runs 2:16 in Berlin

For many years a member of the British Triathlon World Class Performance Programme, Matt Sharp was also the World Under-23 Triathlon Champion in Beijing in 2011, leading home a British podium sweep ahead of David McNamee and Tom Bishop.

As recently at November 2015, he was also an ITU World Cup winner in Tongyeong, Korea and he has a World Triathlon Series best finish of fifth, at Auckland in 2015.

Now a “triathlete turned road racer” per his his Twitter feed description, Matt raced the Berlin Marathon on Sunday, his second marathon following his debut in London earlier this year, where he clocked 2:17:45:

Berlin would see a further improvement on that, his finishing time of 2:16:02 giving him 20th position overall, the second British athlete home behind Jonathan Mellor in 10th (2:12:57).

While comparisons across different courses is always a somewhat dubious analysis, in Berlin Matt’s first half / second half splits were 1:06:40 / 1:09:22, meaning that he went out at almost exactly the same speed at London – but home to a time a full 1:43 faster.