Running with the bulls in Moralzarzal

The main street of Moral, you can see Cody, Jake, and I looking nervous there in the middle

I rubbed my hands together for warmth in the thin drizzle of rain and regretted not bringing a jacket. Multi-colored streamers flapped over the narrow street as young men smoked cigarettes nervously and laced up their shoes. The air smelled like coffee and beer from the cafes that were packed along the streets, their entrances now boarded up with thick wooden beams that stretched between iron fence posts. The posts are designed specifically for these fiestas and are there to keep shops, bars, and onlookers safe. People snapped photos and hunkered close together on top of the fences. Through the thickening rain I could see a white gate at the far end of the street. In the center was painted the rough outline of a bull. Suddenly, I heard a crash. The gate trembled for a second then settled. The bull run was about to begin.
Jake and Cody, my buddies from the BEDA program, and I had been invited to the pueblo of Moralzarzal by Greg, another professor who lived there and wanted to check out the town's week long fiesta and encierros, or bull runs. Sipping coffee on the forty-minute bus ride from Madrid, talking about running with the bulls seemed fun in an abstract, bucket-list kind of way. Cody and I joked about how close we would get to it and who would chicken out first. We had both grown up watching Real TV footage of the carnage at Pamplona every year when thousands of people descend on the city to drink and tempt fate with the torros. Shortly before leaving for Spain my Dad had sent me a youtube video compilation of the worst mano-y-torro clips to deliberately dissuade me from ever partaking.

Lacing up for the run

The good, or bad, part about this experience was that it was 9 o'clock in the morning when we arrived. The encierros were scheduled to begin in 30 minutes and Cody and I were stone cold sober. No liquid courage no warm us as we walked along the street and noticed dozens of police officers and paramedics in reflective yellow, standing behind the fences. We began talking strategy. What ifs. Maybe we should sit the first one out, you know, just see how it all goes down.
So we stood in the pouring rain. Trying not to shake from the rain and the low, ferocious bellowing emanating from beyond the white gate.
The way it works, two castrated bulls are herded through the streets from the bullring (plaza de torros) to the corral where the bulls are kept. Then the bull comes out of the gate and, ideally, follows the other bulls down the street and into the ring. The sound I heard next caused a ripple of excitement along the crowded street.
Bang!
The shot rang out and in the split second or so I had before I started running I realized with startling clarity that bulls are big.
Bulls are VERY big.
This one was pissed and running straight at me. In that moment I could see everything. The cords of muscle straining underneath it's slick hide. Its horns a foot and a half long and sharp. Rain slid off of them and onto the cobblestones as it shook its head, registering the street, the people, the confusing cacophony of sounds and sensations. Its eyes turned to slits, its haunches lifted and it pounced, hooves clacked loudly on the street, connected, then shot forward all in one motion like an arrow shot from a bow.
I was on that fence and scrambling to the top, pushing old folk and children out of the way, faster than you could say man-card revoked.
After the bull went past and I was able to pry my fingers off the wooden beams of my seat and avoid the looks of the elderly and children I had shamelessly manhandled moments before,  I determined to make the next one count. I was going to do this.
The next bull was even bigger than the first. And faster. It was a black blur as it flashed out of the gate and once more I found myself scampering up the sides of the fence and folding myself praying-mantis like inward to avoid getting snagged by a horn. I was lucky, but the guy standing five feet in front of me wasn't. When he tried at the last second to leap out of the way his feet went one way and his body another. His head ricocheted off the street and was immediately awash in bright red blood from a gash above his eye. The bull's left horn pierced his thigh to the bone then ripped it open in all in one motion before it was past us, down the street, then out of sight.
As the paramedics and police ran over and determined whether or not the man's femoral artery had been severed and the crowds continued to order beer and wait for the next bull, I thought to myself what a strange country I was living in.
The third bull was about to leave the gate. I tied my shoes tighter and got whatever a sensible distance is from an animal that has every reason to want to kill you.
When the shot rang out this time, I was ready. I took off. Bounding around tracksuits and Real Madrid jerseys, cutting close to walls and trying very hard not to look behind me. As the street grew narrower near to the plaza de torros the crowded fences began to point and raise there voices quickly to the action behind me. Somewhere behind me there was a mini-van with spikes hurtling towards me, gaining on me every second. I didn't look but pressed forward, underneath the arched gateway of the plaza and into the sand of the bullring then immediately to my right, running along the fence then vaulting myself over into what I hoped would be the arms of impressed onlookers but ended up being an unforgiving floor of cement. Milliseconds later the bull came flying into the stadium.
I wiped sand from a busted lip and heaved myself up to join the cheering crowd as the bull was marched away until the fight later on that night.
I promised myself that I would never do anything that stupid again. Then I ran three more times.