It was my third day in Pamplona and I hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours. My hostel bunk had been overtaken by a man named Lucas who claimed he’d bought me a beer once in Barcelona. I let him have it. I slept instead in a crumpled heap beneath a mural of bulls and saints outside a café that never seemed to open. People danced past me, sang over me, and occasionally sat next to me to smoke and confess in broken English. At some point in the night a small, grinning child tried to stick a churro in my nose. I remember saying “gracias” and meaning it.
At dawn, a loud, metallic voice rang out over the square and the revelers—some of them anyway—grew quiet. I stood, joints aching, and wandered toward Estafeta like I knew what I was doing. I didn’t. I’d read The Sun Also Rises three times and watched a shaky YouTube video titled “Running with the Bulls: HOW NOT TO DIE.” That was the extent of my preparation.
I tried to blend in with the other runners—lean Spaniards in pristine white with red kerchiefs—and instead stood out like a paper cutout of an American tourist. I wore cargo shorts and a Cubs cap. My kerchief was a thrift-store bandana with a paisley print that made me look like a cowboy cosplaying Hemingway.
The police line came fast. No announcements, no gestures. Just a wall of bodies pushing us off the street like we were spilled beer. The runners ahead of me protested. One guy yelled “¡Coño!” and got cracked across the chest with a baton. I let them move me. It felt easier.
I found a gap in the barricade by accident. I was leaning against a wall, trying to remember how many hours it had been since I ate, when the officer next to me turned to yell at someone across the street. I ducked under like a kid crawling into a fort. A man in a Real Madrid jersey gave me a thumbs-up. I gave one back.
I ended up wedged in with a mass of runners under the town hall balcony. There was no room to move, barely room to breathe. It was hot, and every breath tasted like adrenaline and sangria. The woman next to me whispered Hail Marys. A guy behind me did a bump of something off his knuckle and smiled like a lunatic.
I looked up. The clock read 7:42.
At 7:59, the first rocket screamed into the air. I didn’t know what I expected to feel. Maybe a glorious, cinematic swell of courage. What I felt was a warm trickle of sweat down my spine and the unmistakable urge to vomit.
The second rocket went off. That’s the one that says the bulls have been released.
There’s a moment right after the second boom when time goes slack. You hear the pounding before you see it. A ripple of motion. Runners near the barricades pressed back like they wanted to melt through them. Then came the surge.
People started moving and I moved with them. It wasn’t running, not yet. It was this strange, stuttered shuffle, like a crowd trying to unstick itself from the earth. Then someone screamed.
I didn’t see the bulls at first. I saw the people who saw the bulls. I saw the way their mouths opened and didn’t close. I saw a man trip and get dragged up by two others like it was a pre-rehearsed act. And then, suddenly, there they were.
The horns moved first. Fluid, almost elegant. Then the weight behind them—thousands of pounds of fury and instinct barreling down narrow cobblestones that I now understood were much, much too narrow.
I got caught just at the curve—Dead Man’s Corner, La Curva. I’d read that it was the worst place to be. The bulls slip, they crash, they pin. But I’d also read that it was the most photogenic. And so there I stood, against the barricade, like an idiot with a death wish and a need for a good story.
The lead bull hit the curve at full speed. His hooves skidded and he slammed sideways into the wall, taking out two runners and at least one unlucky camera. I felt the impact in my feet. The air went taut.
Another bull came close enough for me to count the ridges on his horn. I ducked instinctively and rolled into a side alley. A man landed next to me, bleeding from the elbow. “Perfecto,” he said, and grinned.
I stayed low for maybe three seconds. Long enough to remember that the run ended at the arena. Long enough to realize I hadn’t come this far to hide in an alley with a man who thought bleeding was ideal.
I ran.
I ran hard.
The cobblestones were uneven and sticky with something I hoped was beer. I passed a woman in a wedding veil, two guys high-fiving in mid-sprint, and a man wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a GoPro strapped to his chest.
Ahead of me: the arena.
The doors were closing. I pushed harder.
The last few feet were chaos. Runners jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting to squeeze through before the police sealed us out. Someone behind me yelled “MOVE!” I surged forward, barely ducking under a swinging elbow, and slipped through just as the massive doors groaned shut behind me.
Inside, everything changed.
Sunlight poured through the open roof like liquid gold. A roar erupted from the packed stands—mothers, children, old men in hats waving white handkerchiefs. A thousand strangers clapping and cheering like we’d just won a war. It was absurd and beautiful.
A boy handed me a flask. I took a sip without asking. It burned.
I stood there in the sand, heart hammering, sweat slick down my back, and realized I’d just done it. I ran with the bulls.
Then someone yelled, “¡Vaca!”—cow.
The gates opened again.
A wild-eyed cow tore into the ring, horns lowered, snorting steam. She chased a man in a Batman cape, who promptly tripped and got lightly trampled.
Everyone laughed.
I laughed too.
Then I ran, again.Riley Trent is a former house painter and current freelancer based in Pittsburgh, PA. His work has appeared in Rust Belt Dispatch, Loose Teeth Quarterly, and on one very enthusiastic Reddit thread about near-death travel experiences. Six Days in San Fermín is his first book.
