The night before the first run in 2004, televisions throughout Pamplona played the mayhem and gore of one bull run after another. While watching, I noted a crucial detail that could make the difference between having fun and surviving, or getting destroyed.

I watched the TV as, time and again, bulls scuffed along the stone avenue, sliding and crashing into what I'd call Dead Man's Curve, the only hard turn - a nearly 90-degree right turn - along the course.

Somehow, having analyzed "game tape" before I joined the first morning's run felt like cheating. But my nerves had started to turn yellow, tottering between "Go for it" and "Just go watch." It was the ability to strategize for safety that boosted me into the adventure with any confidence.

The morning was cool. The streets were flooded with red-scarved runners, many of whom were still drunk from the opening afternoon and night's revelry.

After a seemingly endless and anxious wait, the bulls were unleashed from their corral at the bottom of the hill. They charged to the masses awaiting their arrival at the hill top. A local man, an official of sorts on the course, started yelling at us to run run run run. So many of us had stood there waiting, perhaps not believing the chaos and panic that could crush a person when thousands of adventure-seekers collide with frightened, soon-to-be-disoriented bulls.

The exhilaration drove us, the fear of being trampled by the unseen bull at our backs, the trample of so many people in flight. In truth, no one runs the full distance. Either a runner chooses to be toward the beginning, or s/he chooses to be at the end so to run into the arena and enjoy that different kind of thrill, and the rush of the cheering crowd that awaits. There is no outrunning the bulls or the pandemonium. There is only a matter of moments that any given runner has before bailing out for self-preservation.

My run ended as a bull chased me into a headlong dive just steps before that hard right turn. I hit the hard stone street and pulled myself under the wooden fence. A young guy nearby was already being tended to on a stretcher, his eye bleeding beneath a gauze bandage.

I crawled back under the fence, onto the course to give it another go - until a disoriented bull turned back and charged again. I dove for the second and last time, banging my knee on the sangria-drenched stones again, sliming my clothes, my arms and legs with liquor - and who knows what else.

Enough was enough.

I absorbed the adrenalin rush, stepped into a bar, and was interviewed by an Australian TV documentary crew.

The next day I crammed into the arena with thousands of other non-paying spectators who refused to be left outside. We spilled into every aisle and stairway to see the end of the bull run.