At the San Fermin festival of Northern Spain, held annually since 1591, the Pamplona running of the bulls offers men the chance to test their mettle and prove their courage. In time-honoured tradition, the bulls are set loose through the streets of this quaint Medieval town and, enraged, are run from the corral to the bull-ring ahead of the afternoon fights. For this year's event, OUBC took a number of athletes to the town to participate in the running.

Cross-training has always been a part of the OUBC philosophy and is used as a way of encouraging athletes to develop the ability to pick up and perfect certain skills. What better way to encourage people to learn fast than to put them in a narrow Medieval street with a herd of bulls charging behind them? Sean Bowden, OUBC Head Coach, comments: "We wanted to put the athletes in a situation in which they would be motivated to figure things out for themselves. Running of course is a skill that all of us have mastered, and consequently take for granted; few have of us have ever bothered to really try and perfect it. Pamplona offered us an opportunity to impress upon the rowers this point. When you've got 200kg of prime beef bearing down on you, well, you have to run fast. You just sort of figure it out, really."

Overall it was a successful camp; only three OUBC athletes were lost - two trampled underfoot, a third impaled on the horns of a bull. As such those three were clearly not of the requisite material, and would have been weeded out later on in the selection process anyway. As Jonny Singfield (Assistant Coach; prevented from running because of a bad back) pointed out, "Pamplona saved us coaches a significant amount of time; we could have spent months figuring out that those three were weak and not the sort of men we want in OUBC - some people can hide their deficiencies pretty well - but you can't lie to a bull, and they were rumbled."

(Photos to follow soon.)