Running the Tough Mudder: A 12-Mile Long Torture Chamber
Last weekend, fellow columnist Dan O’Brien and I woke up early on a cold February Sunday, drove to the middle of nowhere and paid $130 apiece to be bloodied, bruised, soaked, poked, and electrocuted for three hours in the rain. We ran the 12-mile obstacle course and self-appointed “Toughest Event On the Planet,” the Tough Mudder. At the end of it all, a man with a Marine Corps tattoo, and who I privately suspect was just a pile of biceps crammed in a windbreaker, gave us each a headband and a beer while explaining that we were part of something bigger than ourselves now.
But we knew better.
We had already decided four miles earlier, and independently of one another, while crawling in the mud through our second set of live electrical wires that we were, in fact, probably not heroes for doing this after all, but maybe idiots. Let me try to explain why.
