His One -Track Mind

From Chennai to Morocco to Indonesia, Sridhar Venkatesh is running a ceaseless marathon across the globe

- Bhavya Dore

In May this year, 45-year old Sridhar Venkatesh chugged through the mountainous, partly wooded terrain of the Rinjani volcano trail in Lombok, Indonesia. It was supposed to be a 36-hour non-stop ultra-marathon with participants carrying their own equipment and food. The route followed a winding 100-kilometre path starting with a summit of the 10,748-foot volcano amidst the clouds and then over three smaller peaks. As his shoes padded on the soft alluvial soil, Venkatesh, was troubled by the height, but the cool air and the overpowering pleasure of why he kept doing this, hit him nonetheless.

“I chose Rinjani because it combined a trail run with altitude and I wanted to get more experience with both,” he says. “A big incentive was not just taking on the challenge, but to experience running in different terrains and under different conditions.” Though he didn’t make it to the half-way mark in time, and, as a result didn’t finish the race, he is determined to run it again. “I really loved it,” he says. It’s one of eight marathons that Venkatesh, founder of the tech start-up Indix, has travelled for in the past decade—including Korea, Cambodia, Italy and Sri Lanka. Usually once a year, he takes off to do a marathon or a trail run in a different part of the world.