Sandy and Tim Herald of Grove City wished their son, Gavin, had found a different way to unwind when his study abroad classes in France ended this week.

Gavin, an international business major at Indiana (Pa.) University, celebrated by taking part Tuesday in the first day of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

The nine-day San Fermin Festival, made famous in “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway, attracts thousands of foreign tourists.

It’s not without its dangers. Three people were reported injured Wednesday along the narrow 930-yard course from a holding pen to the city bull ring.

But Herald wasn’t thinking about danger.

“When I saw that the running of the bulls happened to be going on during the one week I was there, I knew I had to go. Chance of a lifetime, right?” he said.

Herald said he was in Barcelona Monday and booked a bus to take him to Pamplona, arriving about 6 p.m. for what proved to a nightlong experience.

“Arriving in Pamplona is hard to describe whether it’s 10 p.m. or 7 a.m. lining up for the run. The city is alive all night. They hold a concert until about 3 a.m., again free to the public. Locals walk around selling cold beer and sangria for 1 euro,” he said.

“And did I mention everyone in the traditional white clothes with red sash and headband? Thousands of people all alike,” Herald said.

He and his friends, Vivian Santos of Florida and Matt Geddie of Texas, stayed up all night visiting some of the many sights.

In the morning, he said, Santos elected to stay a spectator but he and Geddie lined up for the run.

“The run begins at 8, but we arrived in the square to ensure we got to run by 6:45 because they only allow a certain amount of people each day for safety,” Herald said.

“At 7:45, we were allowed to move freely anywhere on the track where they also kicked out anyone who appeared drunk or out of order,” he said.

“At 8 o’clock the first rocket went off,” Herald said, “letting us know the bulls were loose and the second rocket telling us all 12 were on the track.”

“This is when it turned into pure adrenaline. We waited to see the first bull and with it, we booked it up the road,” he said.

“The scary part isn’t just the bulls, but all the people pushing to get out of the way falling to your left and right,” he said.

“You can get as risky as you want. You can run in front of the bulls, you can try to hold onto them,” he said, adding he was brushed by several of the animals during his sprint.

“I ran by one guy laying in the middle of the track. I kind of paused for a minute. They had guys protecting him all around, but you can’t help but think what happened to him. In the end the goal is to make it into the stadium,” he said.

“I will never forget the feeling of running into that stadium full of people from top to bottom cheering for all the runners. The only thing I can compare it to is a running onto the baseball field for a playoff night game in a stadium but multiplied by about 100,000 people,” he said. The run took about seven minutes.

With the entrance of the last bull, the doors to the bull ring were shut.

After making it to the arena, he thought it was over, but the crowd reaction let him know that they had opened the gates and let the bulls back into the ring with the runners.

The runners and the bulls got to interact for about 30 minutes.

“At this point they can be as daring as they want with the bull or enjoy the show from the outside,” said Herald.

A European newspaper printed a photo of the runners and bulls in the arena and Herald is pictured in the upper right. He’s glad he has proof he actually made the run.

“I’d tell anyone who has the chance to do it, go. You won’t regret it even if you don’t want to run. The atmosphere is something else,” Herald said, adding the only thing that could have made the experience better would have been to have had his brother, Garrett, there.

“He kept telling us this was on the list of the things he wanted to do, and I kept telling him he was only allowed to watch,” said his mother Sandy.

“I was relieved when I got his e-mail. It said ‘I did it and survived,’” she said.

Herald said he Santos and Geddie would travel together from Madrid to Lisbon, and he would fly back to the United States from Lisbon Monday.

He will be entering his senior year at IUP this fall and after that “I want to do a lot more sightseeing.”

“With international business I want to do more traveling, maybe in sales. I want to travel the world and see it,” he said. Maybe not in the company of bulls, however.