5 Things To Know Before Running With The Bulls, You Idiot

The good news is that, in the last century, "only" 13 people have been known to be killed during the Pamplona run (although in just one year there were 113 injuries, including 16 serious hospitalizations).

Camilo Rueda Lopez/Flickr

Oh, and Pamplona is just the most famous of many Spanish bull runs. 2015 saw 10 deaths across the country, which matched a record set in 2009, because it turns out that antagonizing large animals made of muscle and rage can be dangerous (at least violent American sports have the courtesy to kill people slowly). Veteran bull runners attribute the problem to the same thing that can ruin any niche hobby -- reckless newcomers. New people show up, don't take the risk seriously, and get hurt, as Alex learned first-hand.

"When the race started, I made an executive decision to stop and wait until I could see some bulls. People were running past me and I kept screaming 'Come and get me motherfuckers!' I saw the front three charging at me through crowds of people and realized just how large they were. I (figuratively) shit my pants and started smashing my way through people. And then I got hit. I felt like I got hit by a six-hundred-pound linebacker right in the small of my back. I guess one of their shoulders hit me hard enough to knock me down and I skidded on my knees for about fifteen feet. On cobblestones. That hurt like a bitch, and my knees were sliced to hell."

"Some years ago it was very common, mostly drunken foreigners did it, unaware of the dangers," Pepe says. "These days it's much harder, the police make searches and grab drunken people and expel them from the race, with a hefty fine. It's very dangerous to run drunk, because if you fall to the floor the consequences can be tragic."

If you're thinking that it wouldn't be the end of the world if a drunken idiot got some comeuppance, keep in mind that said idiot is running in a crowd -- a drunk guy flailing to the ground can take a few people down with him. So it's a little worrying that, in Alex's experience, "Only one in one hundred people that are wasted get booted." And he should know, because he and his friends basically smuggled in an entire liquor store with them.

Ezhukov/iStock

"[We] were pretty drunk by the time we all got to Pamplona and made it to the center of town," Alex vaguely recalls. "We put on our whites and started dancing and drinking sangria almost immediately. We then got a couple [more] bottles. I'll admit that at no part of this story were any of us far from blacking out."

And yet they were allowed to race against a few tons of leather, horns, and fury and, because this was an interview and not a seance, you're right to assume they lived.

It's a bull sprint, not a bull marathon. Bulls aren't especially vengeful creatures -- they'll gorge you if you get in their way, but they won't stop to give acupuncture with extreme prejudice to people who move aside and let them pass. Most importantly, though, is the fact that your standard factory model bull comes with a top speed of 35mph. Even an Olympic sprinter would wind up painting the cobblestones red.

"You only run in front of them for a few seconds before you get out of the way or get trampled," Stephen says. Otherwise it would quickly become the annual "Jogging well behind the bulls while hopping over the crumpled bodies left in their wake." But don't worry, adrenaline junkies -- those few seconds of bull-induced terror are only a small part of something much larger.

If that looks like a dangerously high fall to you then, well, you probably haven't taken any head wounds from voluntary plummets lately. "Some years ago," says Pepe, "nobody knows how or when, a bunch of Australians decided that it was fun to climb to the top of the fountain and jump, like in a concert, while the rest of the guys are below to grab you, and this became an unofficial Australian tradition." Presumably the possibility of a sudden, brutal death reminded them of home.

Shockingly, this can sometimes go wrong. "So everything is OK while the Aussies are there to grab jumpers, but there is a moment when they get bored and leave. In that moment a guy unaware of this decides to jump and usually hits his head. The results in all these years have been several deaths, paralyzed people, and several degrees of injuries."

Pamplona is trying to stop people from throwing themselves at concrete, but to little success.

Ayuntamiento De Pamplona

Once you've risked a concussion you can head on down to the bullring (the bulls are being run there to be killed, they're not just taking them out for some fresh air and exercise). Pepe explains to us that the ring has two audience sections -- one for serious fans of bullfighting, and one for people who want to get hammered and start food fights.

"Prior to going, the pros grab some food from their houses, mostly sandwiches, some cokes, alcoholic beverages, a bucket of custard ... what usually happens is that you are there, drinking and partying hard, and you suddenly get full, so, what can you do with the leftover food? In your drunken intelligence, you of course decide that throwing it [into] the seats below is perfectly acceptable, they are also drunk so they don't give a shit. So, people start throwing things." And then, before long, part of the bullring erupts into a gigantic food fight. Hell, why not just do that and ignore the stuff with the bulls?

AGENCIAS

The whole affair is basically Pamplona's rich cultural history combined with the antics of drunken fratbro freshmen at spring break, which we're sure some locals love and others hate with the fury of a thousand suns.