Corredor: Why I'll Run the Encierro Until I Can't

Every morning starts the same way. My phone's alarm sounds, I silence it, and everyone else in the room keeps sleeping. I go for my morning espresso and to read the morning paper. I'm not reading for the news; I'm reading to see the age, size, and weight of the bulls that will perform in the bullfight later in the evening. Most in town don't care about these things so early in the morning, but for me, it is critical information, because in less than two hours, I will be with them on the streets of Pamplona. I will not be the only one, of course, and as the encierro draws nearer, young men from across the world gather in the Plaza de Consistorial to play one of the world's most dangerous games: running with the bulls. Many of them are hungover, even more still drunk from the night before. But a token few, like me, are stone-cold sober, serious about dangerous obsession in which we partake day after day, year after year.

My first encierro was in 2022, just before my thirtieth birthday. I was seeking a kick, a high, a feeling to replace something I had lost in life. I was no stranger to such endeavours. My military superiors once told me I took too many risks, calculated as they may be, and I had already been put in the hospital from a skydiving accident where I wasn't wearing any shoes. Pain didn't scare me; failing to live did. But the encierro in Pamplona was a whole new level. I could be trampled by a thousand crazed mozos or gored by a single focused bull. Standing in the Plaza Consistorial waiting for the first rocket signalling the pens were open, I considered my insanity for the first time in as long as I could remember. I was scared out of my mind when the bulls rounded the corner from the Calle de Santo Domingo, and I tried to take off running. It felt like a solid thirty seconds, but in reality, it was only about five before I slammed into a group of guiris who had frozen in front of me from fear. My first run was short, but the adrenaline high was intense.

I returned the next year. And the next. And have every intention of continuing that trend, joining the ranks of a select group of corredores who travel to Pamplona to run all eight encierros each year. I'm different now, though, as I'm no longer seeking a feeling I will never again find. Instead, I am there for the encierro itself, my small way of participating in the centuries-old tradition of the corrida de toros—the Spanish bullfight. It is only logical, in my aficionado's mind, that as an avid spectator in the tendidos every evening I should participate myself every morning, and to see the bulls with whom I courted mortality that morning do the same with a famous matador provides a symmetrical bookend to my days at the fiesta. It also seems unfair, almost voyeuristic, to watch the bullfights if I choose to sit out their unofficial beginning moving the bulls through the city to the bullring's corals.

Of course, any adrenaline junky will tell you that the body keeps the score. I was no stranger to the physiological effects a long-term adrenaline high could have. As a skydiver, I would spend days at a time flying through the air with students, customers, and friends, coming down off the adrenaline only after parking my motorcycle back at my apartment before the next week of work began. Then I crashed. Sometimes that was physically, when I would feel like I had been beaten with a crowbar from all of the work. Other times it was mentally, as my friends could tell how long I had been without an adrenaline kick based on my mood. The encierro is no different. Every year, I start just as nervous as the last, wondering why it is I keep coming back, but by the last encierro, I'm no longer nervous or anxious; I'm only ready to get the run started with the 600-kilogram Miuras that traditionally end each years' runs. When the fiesta is over, I start the countdown once again until the next time I can run. I don't train like some people. I just keep my eyes set on the coming year.

I hadn't understood Hemingway's obsession with bulls before, but after the six 550-kilogram bulls passed close enough to touch on my first run, I had glimpsed it. Skydiving, riding a motorcycle, the military, to me those were all about living life to its full potential. The encierro, though, was about staring mortality in the face. In running, I lived life not just to the fullest but to its potential end, less than a macabre call for help than living life all out, or at least as much as I could without staring a bull down in the bullring later that evening. The danger isn't just from the bulls, although their horns could do substantial, even fatal, damage if they clipped me as they passed by or pinned me against a wall. The real danger in Pamplona is from the people. There is no way to know how you will respond during your first encierro, and new runners usually freeze or run blindly while looking over their shoulder for the bulls. I've been tripped, stopped, and pulled to the ground several times every year, one time flying across the cobblestone street just as the bulls approached. The bulls didn't trample me, but I did fracture my finger in the fall. It was a small price to pay for my chosen obsession, as just up the road a man was caught by a horn and slammed to the ground, unconscious from the force of the impact. He was also bleeding from the arm where the horn had caught him. Injuries were common during Pamplona's encierros, and part of my morning ritual was to read the injury report from the day before. Fortunately, injuries from cuernos were rare. Even so, death comes for us all, and as of this writing, sixteen people have been killed during the encierro. Just four days after my first run, three people were severely gored. It could easily have been me, a fact that I take not with a grain of salt, but as a reminder of how serious the encierros are, despite the fiesta's raucous atmosphere.

But why run? What is the reason? For many in Pamplona, it is a symbolic tribute to their patron saints. Even though the Catholic Church doesn't endorse bull running (and has even prohibited it for clergymen), the encierro is as much a religious tradition as an adrenaline sport. Local tradition holds that San Fermín was killed by being dragged to death behind a raging bull. While that isn't true (San Fermín was beheaded) San Saturnino, Pamplona's patron saint, was dragged to death by a raging bull. In its own way, the encierro is a tribute to both: the red pañuelos tied around runners' necks honouring San Fermín and the run itself venerating San Saturnino. For me, it is also a symbolic devotion to tauromaquia, the culture surrounding the bullfighting traditions of Spain, and, in a deeply personal manner, to myself and what really matters in life - the things that come to mind when the first rocket explodes and mortality runs at me once again.

So, I'll run until I can't. I'm not the only one. Bill Hillmann, Bennis Clancey, and Joe Distler are three fellow American corredores who have become aficionados of the encierros, themselves running every day every year for decades on end. They're my examples for how experienced corredores should be: humble, devoted to the tradition, and counsellors to those running for the first time. Some day, sooner than I am willing to admit, I won't be able to run anymore, either because the tradition has been stamped out or because I am physically unable. If I do get caught, that is the way of the encierro.