I’m Naresh. I grew up with humble beginnings in a suburb of Chennai, dreaming about mountains I didn’t even know existed. Today I live in St. Louis, Missouri, with my wife and our daughter, Mahi.
I’ve finished 58 ultras, crossed New Zealand top to bottom three times under my own power, and ridden a tandem with an empty back seat across four continents, inviting strangers to take it and pedal with me against human trafficking. That became my foundation, Freedom Seat. For work, I solve technical problems: I’m a freelance consultant and the fractional CTO of Bedrock Sandals. More on that here.
Running is a big part of who I am. It’s my identity, my life, my community, my people. Hence the name of this site: I am a runner.
How I got here
The magazine
As a kid with no resources, I used to hang around a used magazine and book recycling place in suburban Chennai, where people threw away their English magazines. Before they were torn up for recycling, I’d get my hands on some and sit and read. That’s where I found a story about Yosemite in a National Geographic. I flipped to a picture of Half Dome with people sitting on top of it. It was love at first sight.
I had no clue what Yosemite was or where it was, but I told my friends that one day I wanted to sit on top of that mountain. They laughed. Where I grew up, just leaving the state was considered an achievement.
In 2012 my work assignment moved me to California, and one of the first things I did was apply for the Half Dome lottery. The morning I got the message that I’d won, I drove there the same day. I started late in the afternoon and ran and fast-hiked to the top, and had the mountain all to myself, except for two people sitting out on the nose. It brought back a torrent of emotions. That mountain still gives me hope that anything is possible, no matter how big or distant it looks.
The book I dreamed over as a kid, National Geographic Park Profiles: Yosemite, and me on the nose of Half Dome, 7 October 2012.
Middle-earth
Soon after I got my scholarship to study engineering, I watched the first Lord of the Rings film. It made me dream, mostly because of the scenery. Wherever it was shot, I wanted to live there. I eventually found out it was New Zealand, and a childlike dream was born: if I ever called a second country home, it would be New Zealand.
I was living and working in the USA, and just before I turned 30 I applied for a New Zealand resident visa, because being under 30 gets you five extra points. It took New Zealand Immigration a long time to decide, but eventually it was approved, and I had to enter New Zealand within six months of the visa being stamped in my passport. So I knew I was going, and that at some point I would have to quit my job. I was still exploring work visa options to stay in the USA, since my five-year work visa was coming to an end and my H-1B lottery had never come through. When none of them worked out, the path became clear. I left the USA before my visa ran out, went back to India working for the same firm, and soon after I quit my job and moved to New Zealand. I didn’t want to just arrive and put down roots. I wanted to start my life there by exploring it on foot like Frodo did, one step at a time, meeting the people, the culture and the land, the good and the not so good, before I settled. So I walked Te Araroa, the length of the country. All told I’ve crossed it top to bottom three times under my own power, once on foot and twice by bike, and I’m so happy and proud to call myself a Kiwi.
Why I run
A few unfortunate incidents in my life left me with a lot of questions about why certain things happen to a certain person at a certain time, and mostly, why me. I was struggling to find answers, so I took up running. The long runs, the exhaustion, the contemplation, the real pain: going through them to find deep answers is how I found my love for trail running, out in the woods in the middle of nowhere, finding something about yourself you didn’t know existed.
As a software engineer, you wait all year for your boss to say you did a good job, and hope it shows in your bonus. On a start line there’s no waiting. Everything you’ve put in comes down to that one point. The mountains, the roads, the trails, they don’t excuse. It’s just you and the open road, and when things go bad, what you do to get to the finish line is what defines who you are.
I’m a Christian, and it connects with the scripture that says to run the race with endurance. And all the people I’ve met on my runs and rides have become more than family. They’ve taught me more than everything else I’ve learned in my life.
Thamel
Between quitting my job and starting my new life in New Zealand, I went to Nepal to train on the Annapurna trails. One night in Thamel, in Kathmandu, walking back to my hostel after a late dinner, a man approached me selling drugs. Then he asked if I wanted any young girls for the night. He said he could supply as many as I wanted.
Growing up in India, I know what it’s like to walk through a bazaar surrounded by people trying to sell you things. But this wasn’t a product. It was a precious, vulnerable human life. That moment sent me into research about human trafficking, and the numbers were staggering. That’s when I decided to make it my cause, and to raise funds for it through all my adventures.
Two lives depending on me
With all my solo travels and expeditions, I never thought I would be a husband and a father. I never thought that life was for me. Then I met my wife in San Francisco, where she was serving as a missionary and I was travelling for work. We did long distance for a long time. After my ride from India to Germany I was stuck in India through COVID, unable to get back into New Zealand, and we were apart for close to two years. When I finally visited her, we got married, and since the end of 2021 St. Louis has been home.
There are two lives depending on me now, and I take very calculated risks these days. And then came Mahi, and life totally changed. Every day is an adventure. I love seeing the world through her eyes: her curiosity, her interests, her excitement. We spend a lot of time outdoors together, at the zoo, in the park, playing. She’s Daddy’s girl, and she’s absolutely my favorite. I can’t wait for her to grow up so we can go on some big adventures together.
The long way here
Every stop is a week of my life, counted from the week I was born.
Week 11982ChennaiI came to planet Earth, in Tamil Nadu, India.
Week 1,3062007Kansas CityMy first trip to the USA, for work. A dream come true.
Living small frees up time for meaningful, memorable things. You never remember your bonus or the promotion, but you’ll always remember that summit, the finish line, and the people you met along the way.
6
Vulnerability is the key to human connection.
It looks like a powerless state, but it’s a beautiful one. It’s what brought all my favorite people into my life.
7
You’ve got to leave somewhere to go somewhere.
You can’t stay in the same place and expect magic to happen. You don’t get ahead by having the potential to do something; you get ahead by doing it.
Why this site
Tim Urban once drew a whole life as a page of boxes, one for every week. Seeing mine laid out like that changed how I spend them. This blog is how I make them count, and how I keep them.
Stories from the road on foot and by bike, books and films, and the world as Mahi shows it to me. Some posts are long. Most are short. Every story sits on its own week in my life in weeks, and every race is in my results. My first blog, Run Naresh Run, lives here now too.
