RUNNING OF THE BULLS

The alarm going off at 5am was not very friendly. In fact, it got snoozed until like 5:30am. Luckily, the Pamplona uniforms had dried from the bathtub washing, so we got to put those back on. Nice. Headed down to free breakfast and then to catch the 6:05 shuttle.

When we arrived downtown…..um….. ugh. Trash everywhere. Apparently, the “normal” routine is to party all night, do the bull run, and sleep during the day in the park. So there was tons of just all night party trash (and stink) going on. The bars were still open, though!

We quickly ducked under the gates and into the area blocked off for the run. I was jealously looking at the people perched on the balconies, sipping mimosas. It really was just an overall surreal experience, prepping for that first run. There were TONS of people, chatting, mostly still drunk, sangria-soaked, sporadically breaking into clapping or singing. There was a lot of nervous energy going on… or maybe that was just me ;)

We moved around a couple of times, as the cops eventually blocked the runners into a consolidated area.

My initial plan was to be near a fence, so that I could run a bit but have a place to duck in if the bulls got “too close.” What we discovered is that the cops are maybe more hard core than the bulls! They were not about to let you get near the fences without a bull’s horn in your side.

We tried a couple of different spots, starting just up from Dead Man’s Corner (so named because the bulls round a 90⁰ corner and if you are standing on the outside edge of it, you’re a dead man….). Once the pandemonium started, we hugged the inside corner and then trotted off for our run. You can see in this video how crowded and chaotic things were in our corner (we're on the wall in the bottom left corner.... if you look closely from about 0:59 to 1:05 you can see us in the bottom center/right - my brother in shades, my blonde hair in a ponytail)


Just to set some expectations, this is a FAST run. The bulls easily outrun people, and certainly when the people are panicking + running on cobblestone. The run is about 850m and was run in 2 min 30 seconds. The current women’s 800m world record is 1 min 53 seconds, and that is not on a jagged, cobblestoned course.

Thursdays run couldn’t have been more amazing. David and I stayed up with each other – they definitely tell you NOT to plan to run with a friend. We didn’t do anything crazy to stay up with each other, but it was so reassuring to have him there basically guiding me along. We ran all the way into the arena – David’s #1 goal going in to the run. This picture came from a US newspaper at the start of the run (the press line was setup directly across from us) - we're circled in yellow :)

The basic overview of the bull’s itinerary on his run day is that he starts out in the pen, runs the 850m to the arena and into the pen there. Then, they cap the bull’s horns with styrofoam and leather and release the bulls one by one to play around with the runners (for about 10 minutes each). At night, the bullfight commences in the arena. Thus ends the bull's itinerary.


The time in the arena was so much fun. In hindsight, it was so much more fun to watch than the actual bullfight, but that will be a story for another day. Eventually I got tired of the adrenaline rush that occurred every time the bull ran to our side of the arena, and I hopped over the 8 foot wall (safely helped to the other side by my hero of the moment, pictured here)

I love these pictures because you can see the complete joy and jubilation at having dominated our first run – and our joy at just surviving!

We went back to the hotel to load up on more free breakfast. We met some really nice people who had (smartly) had a balcony view of the run. They offered to share their pictures with us, which have been AWESOME because obviously we weren’t really taking pictures while running for our lives! The videos featured in this post came from them, as well. (side note: I had proposed often that we watch the first day instead of participate. Partly to develop a better run strategy and partly because the bulls running on Thursday had the highest injury/gore rating of the 3 days)

After some rest and relaxation, we were ready to hit the streets (and bars) of Pamplona again. It was definitely a less crazy vibe going on… more street festival than crazy block party (imo). There were a number of kids being carted around in strollers, which we kind of found to be crazy.




We jumped right back into our sangria/milling around mode and rediscovered some –but not all– of the spots we’d enjoyed the day before.

We revisited the church with the crazy clock, but the fence was open so there was no need to climb it.

We found a different scenic overlook, but there was no lying down for this one. I did discover a super-clean bathroom, which was awesome. Don’t be fooled by the string coming out of the lid that was required to flush it – it was great!

Especially compared with the public bathroom I used later in the day. I knew it was going to be bad when someone handed me 3 squares of toilet paper upon entry.

We hung around and tried to negotiate on tickets to the bullfight but didn’t get anyone to bite on my US dollars. David did manage to get a pic of me trying to talk the Policia into taking a picture with me, and I got this pic of Miss O-something preparing for the fight.

Eventually we called it a day on downtown Pamplona and headed back to the acceptable bus.

We closed the day out with a slightly cheaper visit to McDonald’s, clothes cleaning in the tub, and some rest. I like to think that we drank less on Thursday than on Wednesday, but these pictures don't really support that line of thinking....


Alarm set for 5:20am for Run II