Miscellaneous videos from Pamplona

The square, 15 minutes before the run:

This is the actual run, on my birthday:

In the arena following the run:

In the arena, waiting for the bulls to jump over us:

Bringing in a huge steer to guide the bull back into the chute:

Dude beside me gets stomped in the middle of his back:

Guy gets knocked down in the arena:

Another big ass steer leads a bull out of the arena:

Walking the entire route, part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8:

Run #2, on my birthday!

Well, today was much less eventful getting to the run.  We left around 6:15am, and this time we knew exactly where to go.

We arrive at the mayor’s house around 6:50, and I went directly onto the street to ensure I had a spot.  Met up with two other American’s I met yesterday from San Francisco, and chatted with them for a bit.

Same drill as yesterday, we waited until about 7:45, then they cleared a path for the Mayor who walked the route.  Then they cleared out the people who weren’t right near the square.  I headed up to roughly the same area as yesterday, but just a bit closer to the arena so I could have some more time to run alongside the bulls.

I kept my video camera in my pocket until right before the first rocket signalled, and turned it on during my run.  The videos pretty shaky and chaotic, but I’ll be posting later anyway as soon as I get a decent internet connection.

I stood in the middle of the street, and watched all of the more skittish people pass by, knowing that the bulls weren’t yet close enough.  About 60 seconds after the first rocket, I figured they were getting close and started jogging a bit.  Very shortly thereafter, I heard the hooves pounding up the cobblestones again and sprinted flat out.

I ran for about 10 seconds in front of them, then as I could feel them getting close I stepped off to the right, just in the nick of time.  I turned to the side and actually felt one of the horns scrape across my back.  Just a graze really, didn’t even tear my shirt.  But it left a good mark on the shirt and let me know that I was close enough!

I made it into the arena again, and spent the 30 minutes watching people being stupid with the little bulls.  I was able to get right up to the entrance chute, squat down, and film the bulls jumping over my twice (will post the video later).  The guy right beside me got stomped pretty hard, 2 hooves right to the middle of his back.  I can very clearly remember the sound (hope it comes out on the video) and am glad it wasn’t me.

Going to go back to the hotel and have a little siesta.

Un mañana más día!  Looking forward to it.

Big fat checkmark!

Woo-hoo, that’s a big fat checkmark on the todo list!

Today was AWESOME.  It started out a little rough, I left the hotel around 5:45am.  My intent was to grab a taxi to make sure I went to the right spot for the start.  But despite seeing a half dozen or so, I couldn’t hail one.  I’m guessing they are only allowed to stop in certain spots, or they were all their way to pre-arranged pickups.  So the only real alternative was to walk to the downtown.  It is only about a 30 minute walk, so I thought I would be ok.  But I didn’t bring my map, so there was a lot of mis-direction, wrong turns, walking around in circles, etc.

After some much needed directions from a fireman (gracias!), I arrived at the “mayor’s house” about 5 minutes before they closed off the street!  I have to admit, the scariest part of the morning was thinking that I wasn’t going to make it.

Anyway, a mosh pit has nothing on this crowd.  Everyone was pushing and shoving, the police were grabbing people out of the crowd that were either drunk, or didn’t have appropriate shoes (there were 2 girls pulled out right beside me that were in flip-flops).

About 10 minutes before 8am, they clear a 4 foot strip of the street with police so the Mayor can walk the course.  As he was approaching, I pulled out my camera to film it (which is strictly forbidden 🙁 ) and one of the policemen grabbed me and pulled me out of the street, telling me I couldn’t run (second scariest moment of the day).  I explained to him that I wouldn’t film anymore, and actually left my camera on the sidewalk (it was only a $100 flip camera, not worth missing the running for).  After many “por favor’s”, he took my camera and let me back into the street!  Dodged bullet number 2.

While standing in the crown, I met Paul from Dallas, TX.  He has a company that organizes running races (they had one in columbus on memorial day weekend) – his website is theoriginalmudrun.com .  He gave me a bunch of advice, and we both had the same plan: to head out past dead man’s corner for the start.

At 5 minutes before 8, the police form lines on either side of the square in front of the mayor’s house, and clear out anyone outside of the square.  I was definitely in!  At that point, we were able to start moving around and I headed down to “dead man’s corner”, as I originally planned.  Just as I got there, the first rocket went off, meaning the bulls had been released.  This meant I had about 60 seconds to get where I wanted to be.

The second rocket goes off when the last bull has left the pen, and this happened about 30 seconds after the first.  This is a good sign, meaning that the bulls are all together in a tight group.  The most dangerous situation is when they get separated.  When they are together, their natural herd mentality is to stay together and run.

I made it to my starting point, and then it was just a matter of waiting.  You can’t really see anything because of the crowd.  But you can DEFINITELY hear the bulls coming.  Their hooves on the cobblestone are like thunder!  My heart started beating fast (wish I would have worn my heart rate monitor).  The road is all cobblestone, and it is either wet or sticky.  They clean it every morning just before the run, and many places are VERY slick.

I didn’t want to be too early, but I definitely wanted to make it into the arena at the end.  As soon as I saw the first bull’s head, I ran like hell…  a flat out sprint as fast as the crowd would allow.  There were people falling in front of me, people hitting my feet from behind.  I managed to stay on my feet and ran alongside the first group of bulls for about 20 meters, then somehow joined back up with Paul.  We both had the same goal, to make it to the arena, so we hauled ass up the hill, around the corner, and down through the chute.

Entering the arena was AMAZING.  I felt like a rock star, the whole crowd was screaming and yelling.  About 20 seconds after we got in, the last bull entered the arena, they closed the gate, and the third rocket went off.

Once you are in the arena, you are stuck there for 30 minutes.  There’s no way out.  They put all of the running bulls into their pens for the evening’s bull fights.  Then they release 6 smaller bulls (hard to judge the size, maybe 400-500 pounds), one at a time, and they chase around all of the runners (there are probably about 100-200 of us who made it into the arena).  The have some sort of “ball” on the end of their horns, so it’s a bit less dangerous.  But they are definitely pissed off and go after anyone in their way.

A lot of people try to touch them, grab their tails, etc. which receive loud whistles from the crowd (the equivalent of booing).  It is considered very disrespectful to the bull to touch them.

Each bull is in the arena for about 5-10 minutes, then they bring out a HUGE steer to guide them back in.  The steers aren’t nearly as aggressive, but they are massive.

The crowd is very skittish.  As soon as a bull turned to face them, many people started running with a look of fear on their faces.  Paul and I were much less excited (probably because were a bit more….  mature (and sober) … than the average person in the arena. Most of them were in their 20’s and still hungover or drunk from the night before.

I knew the bulls responded to motion, so I was a lot less skittish than many of the crowd.  There were several times I was about 8-10 feet from the bull, face-to-face.  I just stood still to see which way it was going to turn, and went the other way.

As the next bull comes out, about 10-12 people squat/lay down in front of the chute, and the bull jumps over them.  On the 5th bull, Paul and I were able to make to the chute.  As so0n as the steer and the previous bull went in, they closed the gate and we dove for a good spot on the ground.  I was right in the middle, and there were about 3 people on top of me.  As they opened the gate, I saw the bull tearing into the arena, and held my hand out to try to touch it.  It stepped right on top of me (actually on the people on top of me), and found an initial target, a guy in his 20’s just to my left.  It stood on top of us for about 3-4 seconds while it tried to gore its target, and my hand was right on it’s back leg.  The guy who was the target took a horn (with the safety tip) right to the crotch.  It ripped his jeans clear through, then picked him up by his belt and lifted him until the belt broke.  It was so amazing to be so close.

At about 8:45, the last bull was escorted away by the steer, and they let us out of the arena.  I went back to the mayor’s house, found the policia officia who escorted me out with my camera, and he returned my camera to me!  How cool is that!  I think he was happy to deal with someone who wasn’t drunk or belligerent.

Cannot WAIT until tomorrow morning!  The plan is to start a little closer to dead man’s corner and run just about 50 meters further than today.

The (almost) traditional outfit. Had to show my Buckeye pride!

A fitting breakfast

Some video before the run (about 7:45), before they took my camera:

A video of the non-stop party

Yes, these are some of the guys I’ll be running with in the morning, playing an improvised version of soccer.

More info about the route

The major points of interest on the route are numbered above:

1.  This is the pen where it starts.  It’s all uphill here, and walking it this morning made it pretty clear that this is a bad place to run.

2.  Cuesta de Santa Domingo – just a bunch of shops along both sides.  There are plenty of areas to bail out here, under fences or into shop doorways.

3.  Plaza del Ayuntamiento – A big open plaza area.  It’s lined on both sides with a wooden fence.

4.  Curva de Mercaderes hacia Estafeta – “Dead Man’s Corner” – This is where you see a lot of the news coverage.  It is a 90 degree turn to the right, very slippery.  If you end up on the left hand side of this curve, it’s going to be a very bad day for you.

5.   Calle Estafeta – This is where I plan to start.  It is a bit uphill, and there aren’t a lot of spaces to hide.  But with the sharp corner just before, I’m hoping it will slow down the bulls just enough where I can have enough gas in me to make it to the end.

6.  Curva de Telefónica – Another curve, but much less sharp and dangerous.  It is at the top of a hill, and the rest of the run is downhill into the arena.

7.  The entrance to the arena

8.  The arena itself

Arrived in Pamplona!

After a 4 hour train ride this morning from Barcelona, we arrive in Pamplona.  This place is crazy.  It is a non-stop party.

As soon as we arrived at our hotel, we met David Mora, who is the matador at tonight’s bullfight.  Of course we didn’t know who he was, but the concierge introduced us and we took the picture below.  He’s staying in our hotel, and here’s a link to his site.

We headed downtown and snapped a few pics.

The pen where the bulls are kept prior to the run.  They actually take them here in the middle of the night, through town.

“Dead Man’s Corner”.  This is where most people get hurt.  It is a very sharp, narrow 90 degree turn to the right.  My plan is to start just after this, leaving about a 400M sprint to the finish!

Non-stop party!  These guys have been at it since 8am.

The entrance to the arena.  This is where the run finishes.

Lack of updates….

Sorry everyone for the lack of updates.  I’ve had a terrible time getting access to the internet.

We’ve been in Barcelona since 7/4 and it has been a blast.  Everything here is great (except for the exchange rate – best we found was 0.68 euros per dollar – ouch).

We’re leaving on an 8am train tomorrow morning to Pamplona.  I had my itinerary off by a day, we’ll actually be arriving at pamplona tomorrow (7/8) around noon.  We’ll spend the day settling in, probably walk the route where the bulls run, then on saturday morning (7/9) at 8am local time (2 am Ohio time), it’s GAME ON!!   I can hardly wait.

I’m hoping I can catch some wifi in the train station tomorrow, will try to post some more updates and pics then.

A few posts from the news today:

The Telegraph (UK)

Washington Post

Globe and Mail

Ciao!

Everytime I watch this I get more impatient….

Less than 2 weeks!

Wow, I can’t hardly believe it. In less than 2 weeks, I’ll be in Pamplona and will have already ran with the bulls! I am totally stoked about the whole thing, and not the least bit scared (we’ll see if that changes in the minutes right before).

We’ll be leaving on 7/3, spending a few days in Barcelona to relax and rest up for the big day. My plan is to run 3 times, on 7/8, 7/9 and my birthday – 7/10!

5-4-3-2-1…. Bungee!!!

Well, I knocked off another bucketlist item. Unfortunately my travel companion Emily wasn’t able to join me this time. But, she’s thinking about maybe next time!

I got an email on Thursday that Over The Edge was going to be jumping on Saturday in Akron. Since they normally jump much further away in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, I figured this was the closest opportunity I had to go. We were to meet at the main street bridge in north Akron, just outside of Cuyahoga Falls:

View Larger Map

We were to arrive at 8am sharp. I got there about 7:45, and got a call that they were running late and wouldn’t be there until about 8:30. So I decided to walk down below the bridge and check it out:

We nervously waited until they arrived.  Once they got there, things got a little sketchy.  They had one of us watch out for the police while another loosed the bolts on a manhole cover on the sidewalk in the middle of the bridge.  This got me a bit worried, realizing that not only could I die but I could also go to jail.

Once the manhole was opened, we started moving all of the gear.  Then I got a little more worried when they decided they should send someone to the store to get some string to see exactly how high the bridge was!  With string in hand, we measured it (and believe me I was looking over their shoulder), and we determined it was 207 feet. Since the bungee we were to use had a maximum length of 193 feet, we were good.

This graffiti didn’t sit too well with us (yes, it says “You will die now”):

After all of the rigging was in place, they asked who was going first (uh, not me).  So brave soul Eric volunteered.  This gave me a bit of relief since he was the only other person there who was around the same size as me.

After an hour or so of rigging and adjustment, Eric finally jumped.  We each had 2 jumps, and to speed things up each of us did our jumps back-to-back so as to not have to disconnect and reconnect.

Eric’s jump went off without a hitch, so it was my turn.  They recommended that for your first jump, you should go off backwards, but that wasn’t really what I had in mind.  I wanted the full effect, so I decided to go face first.

I thought I would be nervous climbing over the rail and hanging on, looking down at the water and ground below, but it really wasn’t that bad.  Actually making the leap, however, was TERRIFYING.  As soon as I committed and jumped, it was the strangest feeling.  You really don’t feel the harness or bungee attached to you, and for 5 seconds or so it is total freefall.  I still get vertigo just thinking about it.  The ground was coming up so fast, then at the very last minute you feel the reassuring tug from the cord as it spins you around to face back toward the sky.

Jump 1:

Jump 2:

All in all a good day. No injuries, no legal problems. Can’t wait until next time.

All jump videos

All pictures