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Monday, April 09, 2012

The Death of Caballo Blanco

The Tarahumarans called him Caballo Blanco, White Horse, in honor of the imitations this ultra-runner did for their children. His real name was Micah True.

He developed this goofy notion from his Native American teachers that running should be fun.

When you see runners go by in brightly colored, light-weight shoes, or those shoes with toes, that's White Horse. From the Tarahumarans, the best long distance human runners, True learned the notion of minimalist running.

Lightweight shoes or none at all!

Shoe companies are making gazillions off that idea, but Caballo Blanco just ran.

I try running shoeless sometimes, but still prefer my Brooks' Addictions. They weigh 2 pounds each. And that's without the orthotics!

True died last week, in the middle of a 12-mile run in New Mexico. He had stopped to dip his feet into a stream, and quietly passed away.

It took four days to find his body.

He died doing what he loved.

There's a nice story about this spiritual runner in Boulder Weekly.
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7 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 9, 2012 at 2:45 AM

    Why did you yank your Tricia lawsuit entry?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bernie O'HareApril 9, 2012 at 7:41 AM

    It was inadvertently posted. It was only up a minute. It will not be posted here until it is actually filed. That will be sometime this week or early next week.

    You just can't go around falsely accusing people of burglary, sticking nails under tires, stalking, pedophilia and income tax evasion and expect there will be no consequences. Her accusations are not only false, but are outrageous and are designed to damage me.

    They are made by a person acting maliciously. I found at least three comments from her wishing me dead.

    This is just the beginning. I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. donmilesApril 9, 2012 at 8:32 AM

    Bernie,
    You ought to give closer-to-the-ground running shoes a try. I switched from Asics 2060's to lightweight Inov-8 230's a couple of years ago and my occasional low-back pain disappeared. Inov-8 is a neat little English company that got started making running shoes for the English version of cross-country they call "fell running". You can check 'em out at inov-8.com and they're easy to get on Zappos.com (they've free overnight shipping, including for returns). R.I.P. Micah True.
    - Don

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 9, 2012 at 10:30 AM

    Nice post! Need to keep a little Caballo Blanco spirit in all of us on our runs.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousApril 9, 2012 at 1:40 PM

    Freeze dry this Guy!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousApril 9, 2012 at 11:33 PM

    In a post about the death of a respectable runner I could have done without you name dropping your shoe of choice - its out of place and detracts from the article. As far as I know details haven't been released about COD - so to assume he died peacefully is a bit premature.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Bernie O'HareApril 9, 2012 at 11:50 PM

    I certainly meant no disrespect to anyone by mentioning that I am simply more comfortable in my heavy running shoes than in a glove or barefoot. And since Brooks' Addictions are my running shoes, I saw nothing disrespectful in mentioning them by name, as I would do if they were new Balance, Asics or Nike. I certainly earned no money by mentioning them by name, and agree that would be crass.

    In fact, by mentioning the shoe, I got some good advice from Don Miles.

    My blog links to a very nice article written in Boulder Weekly, where White Horse was based. It does mention that cause of death is not exactly known, but most people are surmising he passed away peacefully and quietly.

    Overall, I suspect you are over-reacting. You're probably overtrained, my friend.

    ReplyDelete

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