Kent’s Dame Kelly Holmes made her parkrun debut at Tonbridge parkrun on Saturday recording a phenomenal time.

The 45 year old double Olympic champion from Hildenborough made the short trip to join 326 other runners for the 112th running of Tonbridge parkrun.

Dame Kelly, who tweeted this before the 5km free event: “Off to do @tonbridgepkrun Intrigued to see what they are like. Tweet me your pictures if you doing one around the uk too this morning.” went on to record an incredibly impressive time of 21 minutes and 25 seconds.”

The personal best run saw Dame Kelly come home in 23rd place overall and was the fastest female competitor.

With the rise of parkrun over the country proving to be a huge success, and fourteen events already taking place in Kent, a fifteenth is due to be announced soon.

Dame Kelly’s involvement is sure to inspire many others and having completed her first timed 5 kilometre run, she tweeted:

“First park run done. Nice to not been seen at start-jumped in as everyone set off. Cold muddy but inspired by others.”

“Owwwwch! The pain of running is not the legs, not the breathing its the fingers thawing out.Feel like I have just trapped my hands in a door.”

You can find out where your local parkrun event is by visiting www.parkrun.org.uk