It started when I was a wee-little tyke; I saw a newscast on TV. Bulls were rampaging through a cobblestoned street in Spain, chasing down runners dressed in all white. The thrill of the event stood out to me more than anything; far more than the bias of the US-based newscaster who spent the segment disparaging the event. At that moment, the seed was planted; little-Me became hellbent on wanting to participate in this event one day.
Of course, my mother (who might actually read this article, in which case: Hi Mom!) was dead set against the notion. Her common quip was not until six months after I’m dead (pay attention; that line comes up again later…)would I be allowed to go to the vaunted walls of Pamplona. However, her dismay did not extinguish my desire to run with the bulls.
Fast forward to the year of 2014; I was a college dropout at the time (a story for another day). I had started taking Spanish classes, partly because my interest in travel had started to grow in lockstep with my independence. I became near-obsessive with learning the language. I started amping up the degree of difficulty in regards to my practice sessions; I used flashcards with time constraints, flashcards in a loud and distracting environment, I’d practice with native speakers on the internet, take cheap lessons and language exchanges, I even joined the Spanish Club when I went back to school (again, a story for another day).
Fast forward another year; I had walked across the stage at college graduation, and had started my professional life…for real this time. I started out with $28,000 in federal student loans, no furniture in my apartment, and less than $3000 in savings. I was always serious about my finances, but with a significantly larger shovel (read: a much higher income, thanks to my ink-wet Bachelor’s degree) I felt emboldened to make serious headway towards what I wanted in life. At this point, I had still never been more than a two-hours drive outside of my hometown, let alone to a foreign nation.
After getting my act together financially (I paid down a big chunk of my loans, bolstered my savings, even managed to snag some halfway-decent furniture), I decided no more excuses. I had the day off from my rotating work schedule, and decided to book the trip. I got off the phone with the woman from my credit card company who helped the bearded first-timer book the trip. It hit me; holy shit, this is real; like, this is actually happening. The next day I called my mother to tell her the news, I told her that she had been dead for six months already. It took a moment for it to register but she eventually understood the update (notice how I didn’t say “enjoyed the update”).
I wanted to do the trip while I was still young and athletic since that would be my best chance at survival. While I was always into fitness, having this looming test gave me a laser-like focus. I eschewed glamour muscles such as biceps and traps in favor of legs, core and cardio. A good friend of mine, a taekwondo blackbelt and former amateur MMA fighter would always quip the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle. I was hellbent on sweating buckets in New Hampshire to avoid bleeding out in Spain.
Then, the big moment came; the day of travel. While I enjoyed the trans-Atlantic flight (my very first time on a plane), I just narrowly avoided missing my connection once I landed in Madrid. I landed in San Sebastian, a city roughly an hour outside of Pamplona. That’s when it hit me, the sudden pang of unrelenting fear; holy shit, I’m actually in a foreign nation, far from home, nobody speaks my language. After letting the nerves rule me for just a moment, I got a hold of myself and asked around on how to get to Pamplona. Soon, I was on a subway to a bus station, the journey continued.
Then, I checked into my hotel in Pamplona. The hotel handed me a free red scarf, as is customary in the city of Pamplona for that festival. They also offered me a deal; a bus ride from the hotel to the downtown course for only three Euros. I happily plunked down two large coins to secure my transit to the event; I was hell-bent on guaranteeing my spot. I nodded, then went into my hotel room.
Rather than finally relaxing within the safety and security of the hotel room, the nerves absolutely took over. I didn’t want to be there; I was beyond terrified about what I was going to do in that city. I became jumpy at every little creak and unfamiliar noise. My mind became a hamster-wheel of what-ifs that ran out of control for the rest of the day.
Morning came, I sprinted downstairs to the hotel breakfast, my stomach growling and the nervousness had only worsened. I devoured my breakfast, inhaling each calorie that I could before hopping on the bus. The fear intensified as the bus let us off a few short minutes later in the centuries-old section of Pamplona. I, along with a rag-tag group of my fellow Americans that I befriended on the bus ride over, hopped the barriers to get inside the course.
Soon the course closed as the population within the course swelled. I walked within the course, partly to check out the interior and strategize, but mostly to burn off some nervous energy. Seeing that many sections of the course were little more than a medieval death-trap, I did some stretching and shadow-boxing. Officially, it was to loosen up my muscles and raise my heart rate, though in reality it was another unsuccessful attempt to kill the gripping fear; it felt like my heart was in a vice. The residents and AirBnB’ers in the buildings flanking the course also started chanting the beat of Seven Nation Army, it was a psy-op…that completely worked on a rookie-Me.
Then…the moment came; the cannons went off. The sound that could only be described as a rampaging river soon came, I ran as fast as I could, periodically using the swim move to get fear-frozen runners out of my way. The bulls had caught up with the crowd; they were less than ten feet behind me; their hooves hitting the pavement were deafeningly loud. I rounded the corner, hugging the wall and with my last wind, made it in one piece to the stadium!
The fellow runners and I who made it, people I had known for less than an hour, celebrated with the camaraderie usually reserved for those of close kinship or sports teammates. The crowd starting roaring, for the worst possible reason. The event organizers had let one of the bulls back into the arena as us runners were caught off-guard! While the crowd roared with approval, we were all practically shitting ourselves.
Each successive bull (of the six bulls from the more aggressive breed that ran) had a roughly two-minute turn inside the arena, with the runners getting a one-minute break in between. Something strange happened; I was starting to actually enjoy playing chicken with the large bovines! After the fourth round, I felt energized by the event, eager for more. My mind said Yes though I took a step and my quads screamed No! It finally registered that I had done as much as my level of conditioning would allow, so I wobbled over to the wooden wall. I flailed my legs over, and luckily, a helpful runner who had chosen to leave earlier was kind enough to guide my landing; other runners trying to scale the wall weren’t so lucky; bodies smacking the pavement from seven feet up were the gruesome norm.
Inspired by the large Australian’s kindness; I stayed on the outside of the wall for the last two rounds to help other runners safely get over the wall. I left the event soon thereafter, and I went back to my hotel room to rest and recover. Despite the event not being the ground-breaking experience that I thought it would be, I left the historic section of Pamplona feeling significantly better than when I arrived. I had no more reason to be afraid, and the most physically demanding -part of the trip was over.
La Fiesta de San Fermines is a bit weird. While I disliked most of the experience, I still feel that many of our nation’s young men should go and do it. The cost of the trip would force some financial planning, the demands of the run itself would require fitness habits to improve, the terror of the event forces one to face fear and to act, the journey requires learning a foreign language, and there’s something to be said about the fleeting camaraderie the event induces. Truthfully, while Pamplona is not a destination I’ll likely ever return to, the trial it represents has a lot of growth-encouraging facets to it that would benefit our softened modern culture.
You need fire to forge iron, and that’s no bull…
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