The last time filmmaker Sterling Noren saw ultra runner Micah True, better known as Caballo Blanco (white horse), was just days before True died.
The two were headed out down a dirt road in Mexico both on their way home and they parted with promises to speak soon. “Then I got a call that [True] had gone missing in the wilderness in Mexico,” said Noren, speaking with The Squamish Chief by phone.
True died while running on the trails in the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico. His body was found on March 31, 2012, his legs in a stream. He had died on a 19-kilometre run of an enlarged heart.
True is famous for having organized the annual Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon race in 2003 for Mexico’s indigenous Tarahumara people as a way to help them preserve their culture and long-distance running heritage. He had spent years running and living with them.
His story was turned into Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run in 2009.
Noren, who is best known for directing motorcycle adventure documentaries is bringing his documentary, Run Free: The True Story of Caballo Blanco, to Squamish on Oct. 15.
When the two men met, neither knew anything about the other.
Noren was doing a solo motorcycle ride through Mexico in 2009 as part of a documentary he was making that aimed to show Mexico as safer than people think. He met True, a fellow American, in a hostel near the Copper Canyon in northern Mexico.
“I didn’t know anything about him at that time,” Noren recalled. “This was even before the book, Born to Run, came out. He was just a dude from America who liked to run, as far as I could see.”
Likewise True didn’t know what Noren did until the filmmaker told him.
True then suggested Noren film the upcoming marathon. Noren made a nine-minute clip that True used to promote the race.
When the book came out, someone said to Noren that the guy in it may be the Micah True he had met.
“I read it and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, totally,’” Noren said.
When Hollywood came calling, True instead wanted Noren to make a full-length documentary about the marathon and True’s role in it.
“He was kind of afraid that the Hollywood movie might not get it right,” Noren said.
In 2012 Noren went down to film that year’s marathon.
“It was a great race, it was so good that year. So many people turned up and the spirit was there,” he said. “I came home feeling really good about the project and that we got it started on a good note, we were going to do a lot more filming.”
Days later, he got the call that True was dead.
Noren said he thinks that True’s near obsession with long-distance running was driven by inner conflict.
“He had sort of this internal, I don’t want to say a war that he was fighting with himself, but he had some of that going on within him and I think that running was the way he transcended that,” Noren said. “We all have our own personal issues that we are fighting, demons that we are battling about who we are and who we want to become, and I think Micah had a lot of that going on within him and he found his freedom running on the trails.”
The documentary will be shown at the Squamish Adventure Centre on Thursday, Oct. 15 at 7 and 9 p.m. Tickets are available at Escape Route. For more information on the film go to, www.runfreemovie.com.
