Where does the creative, dedicated minority go next? Run retail.
Vivek Gowri is the new proprietor of SF Run Co - a landmark moment for South Asians in the running world
It’s possible that Vivek Gowri, the new owner of San Francisco Running Company, is the first South Asian run specialty store owner in the USA. I sadly can’t find the data to check this, so please introduce me to any others that you know of. We’d love to meet them.
I caught up with Vivek at The Running Event in December, where we joked uncomfortably about being able to count on one hand the total number of South Asian people in attendance, either working for brands or as retail buyers. I connected with one of the other two (she reads this newsletter, funnily enough), and she shared the same discomfort.
With three entries in the top 10 most populous countries in the world (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan), South Asia’s position as the most densely populated region of the world is clear. Making up over 25% of the global population, can South Asians really be the smallest minority in the running world? It certainly feels like it. A South Asian man taking charge of SFRC, an important hub at the epicenter of some incredible, storied NorCal trails, is a huge moment.
“It hasn’t been lost on me that throughout my running journey, I’ve been in these majority white spaces, and as you look at running culture going forward, part of taking a leadership role is nudging the sport and the community in the direction I want it to.”
For context, a few years ago, Vivek moved to Truckee – 200 miles northeast of SF, where Western States and Broken Arrow are based – but lasted just 18 months before his need to be among a more diverse population became too strong. Located in Marin County, San Francisco Running Company is close to that humming diversity of the Bay Area. He talks about his motivation about changing the conversation around trail running being “some white people shit,” as some of his friends have called it.
You see, a comment like that comes when you have a group activity where everyone looks the same. It puts everyone else off, and that activity gets a reputation, for better or for worse. Forcing a veneer of diversity will lead to real diversity in time, if that’s what you want. That’s why initiatives like the one Broken Arrow Skyrace implemented last year are so, so important in the trail running world, and why Vivek’s experiences as a trail runner are essential.
“When you see people who look like you doing things, you’re more likely to do them.”
Vivek talks about bringing together the “pockets of trail running diversity” around SF. He tells me about Shades of Brown, a group of South Asian trail runners that gathers in the South Bay that regularly “shows up in force” at 100k and 100-mile runs. He tells me about an auntie handing him a plate of idli and sambar on the track at Auburn at the end of Western States one year – an experience that he describes as both jarring and incredible.
He tells me about his own run crew, Chai and Miles RC, that he didn’t form in order to scale it into a marketing machine for brands, but rather so there was a definite and reliable time and place (Friday mornings, Golden Gate Park) where he and his Indian friends could show up and run a few miles together before chatting over a coffee. Those conversations with people of a similar lived experience are the crucial part.
“There’s this comfort of that shared cultural background, where you’ll say stuff about what’s going on at home or in relationships, and everyone just gets it and all the context. Whether that’s stuff that your parents say or the unique pressures that brown people in their late 20s and early 30s have.”
If you’re still wondering what the need is for a community-specific community like this, no amount of explanation will do, but the freedom one feels not having to code switch during conversation is as intense as it is shared among all people of diaspora.
Trail running comes naturally to Vivek now, though. SFRC has been core to Vivek’s idea of running. He played tennis while growing up, and only ever used that athleticism to run at college when he needed to get across campus between classes. He didn’t really even start to run until he moved to San Francisco for work, and that was part of a general workout group. After that whole group was convinced to sign up for a trail race 12 years ago, the group of city slickers crossed the Golden Gate Bridge every weekend to join the group trail run and train for their race. His attendance continued long after.
“I just carried on down that road. If you keep showing up to the group runs and running trail races, you find a lot of your community through there. You end up in this world.”
Being at the store every week, it’s natural that conversations are had about the business. It came about that the owner, Ted Knudsen was looking for a new steward of San Francisco Running Company and Vivek’s ideas naturally aligned at a time when he wanted to spend more of his time and energy on things he was passionate about.
“I’ve always found the hardware side of my interests to be the thing that I care about.”
“When I was a kid, I played tennis and I was super into tennis racquets. And computers, I was always into the hardware, never into programming or the software side of it. Through and through, a hardware guy, and so when it came to running, I ended up being a shoe and gear nerd. Trail running in particular is even more gear-centered.”
An engineer in the SF tech world by trade, Vivek wants to bring the diversity that he’s used to in his day job into the running space. The beautiful thing is that his personal financial comfort will allow SFRC to be a true running supply store, without compromise.
“I consider this a passion project, and it lets me make the right decisions for the store for the right reasons – not because we need to stay in business. It’s a place of privilege. A lot of independent run specialty stores need to survive and exist. When you take that overriding fear out of it, you’re able to make clearer choices and essentially do the right things.”
It would be easy to paint Vivek simply as a hardware guy, and me, with my focus on cultural commentary and mindset, as a software guy, but it’s never that clear cut. He talks about using SFRC to bring diverse voices and faces into the trail community, and he’s thinking even more broadly than that.
He talks about his new position as a retailer, but also of me in the media, and athletes like Rajpaul Pannu and Ben Dhiman, who finished in second place at the UTMB. He talks about wanting more South Asian race directors, bringing their communities together with this sport as the focal point.
“I want to see more diversity in the leadership of the running world, but I just want to see more South Asians in general at running events.”
In terms of visibility and inspiration, Vivek taking the reins of San Francisco Running Company is a fantastic next step in realizing all of those hopes and dreams for the South Asian running community and beyond.
Links
Related articles
My book, This is Running
Yes, you will be able to purchase my book at SFRC, but for now, you can pre-order it.
USA - Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble | Amazon US
UK - Bookshop UK | Waterstones | Amazon UK
A to Z of Running
I’m going to be writing an A to Z of Running in 2026. I’ll start on Monday with A for… [redacted]. If you have a topic that you’d like me to write about, just fill in this form and it’ll be added to the list!
this is awesome. excited to share my chat with Vivek on Long Run Labs here soon!