850 metres of adrenaline

I knew too that, despite my fears, I would run.

El encierro is the highlight of July's Feria de San Fermin in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona, a fiesta dating from the Middle Ages and celebrating the city's patron saint.

Each morning of the fiesta starts with the bull run — 850 metres of adrenaline open to anyone not obviously inebriated and willing to test their mettle in front of six charging bulls.

We arrived in Pamplona Sunday evening to find the city packed with locals and tourists flowing out of bars dressed in the San Fermin uniform of head-to-toe white accented with a red neckerchief and a sash tied jauntily around the waist.

Monday morning we stumbled out of bed before six to get to the run on time. Runners take their place on the course by 7:30 a.m. I had no appetite for the croissants and chocolatines in the hotel lobby and the coffee I drank only jangled my already taught nerves.

The streets in the casco viejo were packed with thousands of people and crowded cafés were selling coffee, hot chocolate and pastries to the revellers, the curious and those readying for the run.

A drunk man wandered up to me, threw an arm around my shoulders and in a gust of warm, boozy breathe, told me Spanish men like to push women runners in front of the bulls.

Newsstands were hawking copies tabloids displaying graphic photos of yesterday's unlucky runners caught mid-gore. I was trying to take deep, calming breaths, but they came out sounding like tense sighs. I couldn't stop thinking about how soft and fragile the human body really is and about the 27-year-old Spaniard gored to death just days before by a beast called Cappuccino.

A drunk man wandered up to me, threw an arm around my shoulders and in a gust of warm, boozy breathe, told me Spanish men like to push women runners in front of the bulls. I heard this a few times, but it seems to be a myth. Still, few women run — it's just not something Spanish women do — and you have to be ready to take care of yourself on the course.

We decided to move up the run — a narrow street lined with tall wooden barricades and buildings where people watch the action from balconies — to the Mercaderes section, away from the sharp turn nicknamed 'dead man's corner,' where the bulls often skid and fall.

We were placed before a mural of Saint Fermin, next to a man is standing before the image, head bowed and praying. My nerves were showing on in my expression — a startled expression I saw mirrored in a couple of faces around me — and a Spanish man pulled a cigarette from his mouth and asked me if I wanted out.

I said no, but my voice came out higher than usual.

With just minutes to go before the 550-kilogram animals are released into the streets, the crowd on the course started stretching, jumping up and down, or laughing with false bravado. We were all scared and waiting for the sound of the first rocket when the bulls explode out of the corral and hurdle towards us.

I heard its pop, then nothing. We craned our necks and I walked forward a few nervous steps. Then I saw a wall of people sprinting towards me and I started to run, sticking close to the wall and it was chaotic rush and then I saw them. I couldn't hear or smell the bulls but I could see their thick, low backs and pumping muscles, and for a moment I could have touched the brown flesh when they passed. I could see the cowherds — who run behind the herd with sticks, keeping them in a pack — followed by the larger, tame oxen that come chugging just behind.

Then it was a final sprint into the bullring filled with a cheering crowd and the other runners, and we halted now in the golden sand, catching our breath.

Later in that bull-mad city, I would watch as the beasts I had run beside were killed, their lives ended at the hands of visiting matadors.

Photo: SanFermin.com