BY FRED WOODCOCK Most days software developer Paul Martelletti pounds the streets of London to and from work, a return commute of about 25km, which doubles as his training regime.

Next August, there is an outside chance this little-known 32-year-old from Manawatu will be pounding the streets of London wearing the black singlet in one of the glamour events of the Olympics, the marathon.

Meet New Zealand's fastest marathon runner of the past two years, whose rise in the sport has been extraordinary.

This is a man who until four years ago was not a serious runner.

He did "a bit of running" in his younger days and played social rugby while working in Wellington but that was basically it, until he moved to London in 2006 and started running to work.

At first he did it to keep fit, but one day a colleague raised the idea of doing a marathon. "I thought OK, why not, and it all snowballed from there really," Martelletti explains.

"I started doing some races and picked up the training more as I was doing better and better."

He started averaging about 48 kilometres a week but later in 2007 he decided he wanted to enter the London Marathon so he stepped the training up. Only problem was the ballots had closed by then, but, given his age, he figured he could qualify if he ran another marathon under three hours.

He ran two hours and 58 minutes, in his first marathon, and six months later slashed that time by half an hour to 2:28 in the London Marathon.

He has now completed 14 marathons, some as mere training runs, his best performance being 14th in the Berlin marathon in September, a race won by Kenyan Patrick Makau in a world record time of 2:03.38.

Martelletti's time in Germany, 2:16.49, was the fastest by a New Zealander since 2009 and has taken him from novice runner to Olympics' hopeful in the space of four years.

"It's crazy, really. I never thought I'd get to where I am. I guess I never thought that far ahead. It just seemed too far away. It's quite surreal."

He has done the Olympic B-standard but must meet the A-standard of 2:12 to be nominated for selection under the tough criteria outlined by the New Zealand Olympic Committee. He can "definitely" go quicker than 2:16, but getting down to 2:12 before London is a massive ask.

Under the IAAF (world governing body of athletics) qualifying criteria, finishing inside the top-10 of a gold label marathon is the equivalent of an A-standard, and he is lining up one of those in Xiamen, China, early next year.

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