CHARLOTTE DALE became the only woman runner since 2002 to beat all the male competitors in an official road race in England when she won the Whitstable 10k.

Dale, who runs for Invicta East Kent and who is now training for the European Under-23 track competition in July and the 2006 Commonwealth Games, is the only woman who has achieved this feat.

She pulled it off in 2002 when she also won the Whitstable 10k. This time she beat the women’s course record, which she had set herself, by winning in 32min 54sec.

She said: "I felt quite good. I have been training really hard in the last two weeks, and I had not eased down for this race."

Dale started off outside the leaders, however, as Neil Renault and Jonathan Holmans went ahead. The three runners have frequently trained together.

Renault, of Medway and Maidstone, won the men’s race in 33:14, followed by Holmans in 33:30.

They ran close together until about 2km from the end when Renault pulled ahead. Renault is a final year biology student at the University of Kent, and sat his first exam the day after the race.

Holmans, a rising star of the Canterbury Harriers club who organised the race, felt he went off a little quickly and would have done better to have held back, but ran a personal best by 32 seconds.

Canterbury Harriers were able to make a donation of more than £850 to local charity Dave Lee’s Happy Holidays.

A £1 donation was made for each of the 600 or so entries received, and a raffle was drawn on the day.

Dave Lee fired the gun at the start after a few words of welcome.

He said: "Good morning, fellow athletes. I understand that you’ll be on the road and off the road. If I was with you, I’d be in intensive care, quite frankly."

Although he did jog along for a few yards with fellow comedian Freddie 'Parrot Face’ Davies, he blamed his decision not to compete the full 10k on "overtraining".

Freddie Davies, a vice-president of the Happy Holidays charity, had flown from Glasgow to help raise money for the charity, appearing in Lee’s variety event at the Marlowe Theatre the night before.

He was at Lee’s side at the start of the race, and said: "My qualification is that I’ve got athlete’s foot in both feet."

England’s 50k walk gold medallist from the 1960 Olympics, Don Thompson, also competed. The race was the 95th 10k of his career, and he hopes to break 100 in the next few weeks.

Although now 72, he appeared slightly disappointed with his time of a little over an hour. He thought he may have started too fast. "I find it very difficult to start off fast," he said. "I just haven’t got the spring."

He has also run 154 marathons, 152 half-marathons and about 110 10-mile races. The Whitstable 10k is an annual fixture for him, and he plans to come back next year.

Invicta won the ladies’ team prize through the efforts of Dale, Janice Moorekite and Samantha Reid.

Moorekite said that Dale’s presence helped all the other Invicta members: "It makes a huge difference for everyone in the club."

Medway and Maidstone won the men’s team prize.

The race was sponsored by Halifax Estate Agents in Whitstable, and was held at the Waterfront Club which also donated money to the race.