Summary
What? The River Relay is a baton relay run over five stages from Boveney to Kingston-upon-Thames, finishing at the Hawker Centre.

When? Sunday 3rd September 2023 starting at 9:00am

Who? Mixed teams consist of 5 people with at least one woman, the others can be a woman, a Veteran (35 and over) but not more than 3 Senior Men.
Due to our TRA licence requirements, all team members must be at least 18 years of age. We may be able to accommodate a 16 or 17yo but only by exception – please contact riverrelay@stragglers.org if you wish to enter one.

Where? The stages range from 4.4 to 6.5 miles over friendly terrain (a total of approximately 26.7 miles) so this is an excellent introduction to relay racing and runners of all standards are welcome.

Why? All proceeds from the race (after expenses) go to charity – please see below

Cost? Just £60 for a team of attached runners, (£70 unattached).

Results for 2023 can be found here.

The River Relay is run under licence from The Trail Running Association, permit number TBC.
The permit can be viewed at TBC

The Route
The race starts at 9:00 AM from the Chapel of St Mary Magdalene on Lock Path at Boveney. It finishes at the Hawker Centre, Lower Ham Road, Kingston. This distance is approximately 26.7 miles - just over a full marathon!
A detailed PDF with maps annotated with route instructions for each stage is available at River Relay Maps 2022 and a YouTube video of the route being run-through is available at River Relay Course Run-Through
 

The stages are summarised as follows: 

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Instructions
A number of documents are available that provide instructions for both
runners and marshals (these are up-to-date for 2023):
Instructions for runners 
Instructions for drivers 
Instructions for changeover/finish marshals 

Entries
You can register your interest in entering a team in the relay now! For Stragglers entries an online form will be issued shortly, and for teams from other clubs please contact riverrelay@stragglers.org.
At the start of June an invitation to participate is sent to clubs. Those confirming that they want to enter teams are then sent a race entry form.
(This bit of bureaucracy helps us as organisers know how many teams to expect and team captains to get their teams selected).
The closing date for payment for entries is the 27th August. Final team declarations however are not required till just before the start of the race.
Any entries accepted after 27th August are at the organiser's discretion.

Charities and Prizes
Before the race each team is asked to nominate a charity. The proceeds raised by the event are divided between the charities nominated by the first three teams. In addition there is a prize for the team most closely predicting their finishing time and two Tombola prizes drawn at random from those teams not winning one of the other prizes.
Throughout its history the River Relay has had one aim - to give the profits from the event to charities nominated by the competitors. Following deductions for the Sweepstake, Tombola and memorial prizes money is allocated as follows:
Winning Team 50% of prize fund
Second Team 33%of prize fund
Third Team 17% of prize fund

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Money is set aside for the Sweepstake Prize (for the club best predicting their finish time - please note this award has become more difficult to judge as the number of race entries has grown and for this reason it will be judged in the week following the event); two Tombola Prizes (drawn at random for teams not winning one of the other prizes). Finally, there are donations to MacMillan Nurses and Cancer Research. These two charities were selected in perpetuity to receive money from the River Relay following the death of Tim Adam (Stragglers) and Peter Allan (Staines Strollers).

Route Finding & Time Keeping
Each team will be responsible for route finding, getting their runners to and from stages and recording their running times. Running times must be submitted to the Race Director at the end of the race.
There will be MINIMAL marshalling en-route with the exception of changeover points. There will be random marshalling en-route to ensure fair play.

Each team will be responsible for getting their runners to and from the changeover points. Please familiarise yourselves with the instructions for runners, drivers and for marshals which are linked from this page.

 
Team make up and declarations
Each team should be made up as follows: you must have not more than 3 senior men (aged 18-34), and you must have one woman.  You can have as many women and vets as you like (so a team of all senior women, for
example).  All team members must be at least 18 years of age.
The final order of the runners must be stated on the Team Declaration. Final declarations must be made by 8:30 AM on the day of the race. The declaration should include the team's predicted finishing time which will be
used for the sweepstake prize.  No runner may run two stages for the same team. (Runners can run a separate leg for another team.)

Our record entry was in 2017 with 82 teams representing 31 organisations and clubs. We encourage entries from corporate teams or just groups of friends! Team times are likely to range from just under 3 hours to around 4 hours 30 minutes.

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After the Race
The race finishes by the River Thames at the Hawker Centre in Kingston. As more and more teams enter the final stage of the race the changeover gets really busy and there's quite a buzz.