Haile Gebrselassie won the Berlin marathon for the fourth straight year on Sunday but the Ethiopian failed to break his own world record after fading in the warm weather.
Gebrselassie, inside word record pace for most of the race, clocked a time of 2 hours 6 minutes 8 seconds, well outside the blistering record of 2:03:59 he set in the same city in 2008.
Kenyan Francis Kiprop was second, almost a minute later, and Ethiopian Negari Terfa came in third.
Gebrselassie, who also broke the then world record here in 2007, and challenger Duncan Kibet, the second fastest man over the distance, set off at a quick pace.
With a group of high quality pacemakers including Luke Kibet, who won the marathon gold medal at the Osaka 2007 World athletics championships, Gebrselassie shook off Kibet at the 20km mark.
But as the temperature climbed to around 20 degrees Celsius, the 36-year-old, who ran sub-three-minute times for all but one kilometre until the 35th, started to struggle.
"I am OK but in the last few kilometres I was very tired," said Gebrselassie after the race. "Maybe I pushed too much. Yes, I did. I was trying to push but the last five kilometres I was tired and I could not push any more.
"The last 10 kilometres it became a little bit hot," added Gebrselassie, who wants to run the marathon at the 2012 London Olympics.
Gebrselassie has twice won Olympic gold over 10,000m and won four consecutive world athletics championships gold medals over the distance.
Fellow Ethiopian Atsede Habtamu Besuye won the women's race in a time of 2:24:47.
