The Cotswold Way Relay

I recently took part in the Cotswold Way Relay. This is one of many races I didn’t know about and wouldn’t have been able to enter without being a member of a running club.

The Cotswold Way is a famous walking route along the Cotswold Hills. It is 102 miles long and starts in Chipping Campden in the very north of Gloucestershire and runs all the way to Bath.

The Cotswold Way Relay is organised by Team Bath Athletics Club. In 2024, it was in its 32nd year. There are 10 legs, which vary in length between seven and 12 miles. It is not a relay in the sense that you have to wait for someone to hand you a baton – because no doubt some people would be out running very late at night! Each leg has a starting time. The first leg set off from Chipping Campden at 7am and our team (leg 9) set off at 4pm.

Our club had three teams in the race. All teams for our club were completely mixed – five men and five women. The rules state that a mixed team should have at least four women in the team. Teams could also be veterans, women only or open (which could be all men or no more than three women). There are prizes for the male and female winners of each leg, as well as overall first, second and third team prizes for the veteran, women’s, open and mixed teams. I was pretty sure our club wouldn’t be picking up any prizes.

Anyone who has run all 10 legs of the Cotswold Way Relay becomes a King or Queen of the Cotswold Way. Of the three of us from our club running the same route, two of us were running it for the first time and the other one was running his ninth leg. He was our ‘leg captain’ who organised the logistics for the three of us and actually knew where he was going.

The three of us went down to do a recce a few weeks ago, which is strongly advised. When we did the recce, it took us 1 hour 46, with some stopping and a bit more walking than I would usually do. I hoped to run it in just over 1 hour 30. The leg has a cut-off time of 1 hour 55 – although this could be made longer in severe weather. The day started cold with torrential rain, unfortunately for those running the first few legs. By the time we ran, it was dry and the sun was out. It was warmer, but not exactly July temperatures!

When we did the recce, I wore trail shoes. I’m not a fan of trail shoes. I discovered there was a surprising amount of the route on road and that the trail wasn’t particularly muddy, so I thought I would wear road shoes on the day. Then we had 24 hour of torrential rain, so I wore trail shoes!

The course completely follows the Cotswold Way and there are no marshals out on the course, apart from at the most serious road crossings. (My husband and other members of our club were marshals at the A417 in Gloucestershire on leg 4 of the race in the morning.)

We set off at 1:30pm because it was an hour’s drive. We took two cars and left one at the finish line, then drove the other car to the start. Parking was at Old Sodbury football club, where we also had use of toilets. The finish line parking was just in the road. There is no chip timing. It is all very low tech. An organiser had a clip board with everyone’s names and team names on it and he just ticked us off.

Then we walked together up to the start line by a pub. We were told there was a gate within about 300m of the start, which we would have to go through one at a time and we should arrange ourselves in an approximate order. I didn’t arrange myself in the right place! There were actually four gates in very quick succession, but the first gate had sorted people out, so the queue was much smaller at the rest of the gates.

Then there was a series of stone stiles, where I generally had to wait for a person in front of me and the person behind me had to wait for me. It wasn’t long before the first really steep hill. Everyone in front of me was walking and I found myself walking too.

The route goes through farms and a couple of villages. It even passes through a couple of churchyards. There were fields of very tall wheat. There were wooded areas. There really was pretty much every sort of terrain you could think of. And it had all dried surprisingly well. I really didn’t need my trail shoes.

It is a rule that every runner carries 500ml of water/ liquid. There was one water stop on the course at 5.5 miles. I decided not to take any water, but I did drink all of my Lucozade. I also took three Bloks energy sweets and ate all of those.

I was surprised at how fast I was running. Four miles, then five miles cam along very quickly. We’ve been doing a bit of hill training with the club and I think it was helping me. I overtook a lot of women and a few men. I was especially pleased to pass people from our town’s other two clubs, as they are generally more competitive and better runners than us.

Everyone was friendly and held the gates open for each other (there were so many gates) and said ‘well done’ as I ran past them. The marshals at the big road crossings (I think there were four – we crossed the A46 three times) did a great job. We ran through a pretty village called Tormarton and past the stunning National Trust Dyrham Park building.

If you’d asked me what I’d seen on the recce, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, but it all came back to me on the run. I’d remembered there was a big hill near the end. There was a big hill at seven miles and I was wondering whether that was the big hill or whether there was another one at eight miles. It turns out there was another one at eight miles!

Until these two big hills, I was well on track to do below 1 hour 30. Then I slowed down massively because of the hills, which I needed to walk. My eighth mile was by far my slowest – at 12:12. My fastest mile was the sixth at 8:42.

Then I was off the hill and running down the road. The two women in front of me nearly missed the turning and I would definitely have followed them, but the man behind shouted to them. I remembered here there was a small pedestrian gate, which is closed, and an open gate for cars. I ran through the open gate, while the women struggled with the closed gate and I overtook them. Then I was on the road where we parked and sprinting for the finish line. Although I didn’t actually know where it was or how long I would be sprinting for…

The finish line was a couple of guys with clipboards and stopwatches outside the village hall. I had finished in under 1:30. My team mate was sat in the shade on the step of the village hall. He’d beaten me by less than two minutes. Our other team mate came in a few minutes later. Before the race, I’d predicted I would come in at about halfway and I did – 51st out of 106 on our leg of the race. I was 21st out of 44 in the mixed category on our leg.

I loved my first experience of the Cotswold Way Relay and I hope to be back next year.