M35-39 at Berlin: Adola Wins in 2:07:11 as Chahdi Closes Hard

• Adola takes the M35-39 title in 2:07:11 (4:51/mi), holding a top-four position among the men throughout and surging to 3rd among men at the 35K mark before settling to 4th at the line.
• Chahdi's finishing kick is the story of the race: he entered the men's top 10 after 30K and posted the 2nd-fastest split on the 40K-to-finish stretch, clocking 2:07:43 to land just 32 seconds off the win.
• Berghout's late charge: sitting 75th among the men at 5K, he climbed all the way to 31st by the finish — the biggest mover in the top 20 of M35-39 — fueled by the 17th-fastest 40K-to-finish split in the men's field.
• A 9-second gap separates 8th and 9th: Herrmann (2:24:19) edges Hewitt (2:24:57) despite finishing one place lower in the listed order — timing resolves it cleanly.

Guye Adola owned the M35-39 race from wire to wire, never slipping below 4th among the men and running 4:51-per-mile across 26.2 miles in Berlin's warm, humid conditions (71°F, 85% humidity). His 2:07:11 was the class of a 5,116-finisher age group by a comfortable margin on paper — but Hassan Chahdi made him earn it. Chahdi was buried in 24th among the men at 5K and spent the next 35 kilometers methodically working his way forward, reaching the top 10 by 30K and ultimately posting the 2nd-fastest closing split of anyone in the men's field from 40K home. The 32-second gap at the finish reflects how close Chahdi's trajectory came to bridging it entirely.

Behind the podium, Erik Hille was the class act of the mid-pack, running 5:13/mi to finish 3rd in M35-39 at 2:16:40 and posting the 22nd-fastest second-half split among the men. Emiel Berghout's race told a different story: a cautious first half that had him 75th among the men at 5K transformed into a relentless surge — 17th-fastest closing split in the men's field from 40K — that carried him to 5th in M35-39 at 2:19:53. Further back, the battle from 8th through 13th was a genuine scrum, with six runners separated by just over two minutes and timing needed to separate Doyle (11th, 2:25:53) from Shumbe (12th, 2:26:20) and van Overeem (13th, 2:26:23) by fractions that the clock makes clear even when the displayed times look nearly identical.