Last June, I completed my first 100-mile run, starting in Winchester and finishing in Eastbourne on the English Channel.
I raised some money for charity, and the day was a success in all but one manner.
It is — one quickly is told by other competitors — the goal of all 100-miler ultramarathoners to run that distance in under 24 hours, and I had completed it in 24 hours, 41 minutes.
So, back I went to do another, albeit with a little less of a charitable contribution.
At the race start in London, I stayed at the 78-room Travelodge London Richmond Central, which does what it says on the label but looks exactly like most Travelodge hotels.
It was, most importantly, very comfortable and quiet.
The hotel opened in 2015 and is owned by developer Henry Boot Group, which built it out of two office buildings and negotiated a 35-year lease with the hotel firm.
As I left the door at 8 a.m. on May 7, another door opened three doors down and out stepped a pair of runners who evidently were among the 510 starters of the race I was about to embark on.
This particular Centurion Running event is named the Thames Path 100, and its course meanders along the famous River Thames from Richmond to Oxford.
It is a glorious riverside tour of a millennium of Home Countries England history, passing Hampton Palace; Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed in 1215; Windsor Castle, one of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s homes; Eton, on whose playing fields it is said the Battle of Waterloo was won; Pangbourne, where Kenneth Grahame, author of “The Wind in the Willows” lived and died; Goring-on-Thames, where The Who’s guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend was born; and on to Oxford, that “sweet city with her dreaming spires; she needs not June for beauty’s heightening.”
The night before the race, the United Kingdom Environmental Agency decided to close one pedestrian footbridge, so the course had to be slightly re-routed, which added two miles to the overall distance.
After one tumble, eight hours of night running, fantastic volunteer support and a lot of bridges, I crossed the finish line at the Queen’s College Recreation Ground 23 hours and 12 minutes after I started.
The job was done, I am happy to say.
I finished, it just so happens, shoulder to shoulder with the woman of the couple who had stepped out of the room next to mine at the Travelodge. (Her husband was there as crew support, not as a runner.)
I walked very slowly to the 181-room Voco Oxford Spires, an IHG Hotel, which is adjacent to the finish area.
This property, set back from the busy A4144 road, is surrounded by greenery, the recreation ground and a footpath to the river to its left and a field of horses to its right.
The hotel was until recently part of Starwood Capital Group’s Principal Hotels Group.
In May 2018, French real estate investment trust Covivio, known then as Foncière des Régions, bought it among a portfolio of 14 hotels, 10 of which were Principal Hotels assets, and subsequently gave management to all but one of the assets to IHG Hotels & Resorts.
I believe originally it was the Oxford Spires Four Pillars, before becoming the Principal Oxford Spires and now the Voco, the third of that brand to open in the United Kingdom following hotels in Solihull, near Birmingham, and Cardiff, the capital of Wales.
It was quite fun to walk through its lobby knowing I had written through its history in the pages of Hotel News Now.
The staff there was wonderful, giving me and a friend, a fellow runner, very early check-ins (it was not even 9:30 a.m.) after they realized what we had been doing for the past 24 hours — and we must have looked quite a sight.
Later — that is, after a shower — the staff booked us taxis to the local pub, the Head of the River, a Fullers pub with 20 hotel rooms, and altogether a celebrated spot, again on the River Thames, even though it was just a little more than half a mile away.
The hotel also signified a first for me — the first time I had ever ordered room service, which might sound odd, but usually I would always prefer to experience the restaurant itself and its food, rather than just its food.
I was worried I might have fallen asleep on the plate.
Its last mark of excellent service was mailing me back my phone charger, which I always make a point of packing but obviously did not this time.
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