Running with Pamplona's bulls, 'a high that lasts all year'

"It's a different dimension... it's like floating," said Texan Larry Belcher, as he sought to put into words the feeling of being chased by a pack of thundering bulls.

Hundreds of veterans like Belcher, a 62-year-old university professor, as well as young novices, test their courage every year in Spain's most famous "running of the bulls" in Pamplona.

The daily races are the highlight of the San Fermin festival in the northern Spanish city, nine days of music, dancing and drinking and which ends on July 14.

Popularised around the world by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises", the "encierros" involve runners trying to outrace six bulls which charge through the old town's narrow, cobbled stone streets to a bullring where a bullfight is staged.

The Pamplona bull runs have claimed 16 lives since 1911, the most recent last year despite increased safety measures, and each year dozens are injured.

Joseph Distler, an American in his 60s, said when he first came in 1967 "I almost had a heart attack ... and I said, these people are insane."

But "I got this tremendous overwhelming feeling and said, I have to go back," said the English teacher from New York who now lives in Paris.

"I stood in the street and I watched the bulls come up the street, and they were black mountains in motion, and I could hear them grunting and the cowbells ringing, and it was fantastic!"

Now it has "changed the way I looked at life, because once you're close to a bull, once you've seen the power of the animal, once you've seen men hurt by running bulls, the excitement, the adrenaline, it makes you look at your life in a different way".

"These seven days in Pamplona give me such a high that lasts all year."

Belcher, who has been coming to Pamplona for 34 years, agreed that the experience was out of this world.

"Can you imagine running beside or in front of a fighting bull? You look back and... It's difficult to describe, it's a different dimension, there are days where if that happens ... you are floating and everything that happens is so emotional," he said, wearing the traditional red and white scarf of the "corredores" or runners.

Jose Luis Ayensa, a 35-year-old Spaniard, said his grandfather, "one of the great corredores", got him started 15 years ago.

But he said it "demands physical training throughout the year, at least an hour and a half of sport every day, and during the festival no alcohol and in bed by 11pm."

Javier Hualde, who is just 18, the minimum age, said he trained hard and studied videos of bull runs before his first run this year.

"I was very nervous, but it was worth it," he said, but added "it was much more difficult than it seems on the television."

But the popularity of the event has also led to overcrowding and many inexperienced runners taking part, leading to some of the veterans getting hurt, complained Alejandro, 41, who has been coming to Pamplona for 15 years and keeps in touch with other corredores on Facebook.

"Most of those who are gored are experienced runners," he said.

The traditional bull run is held daily at 8:00 am (0600 GMT) along an 825-metre (2,706-foot) course.

Pamplona's San Fermin festival also features concerts, street parties and dances, and the revellers' nightly ritual of spraying each other with red wine.