Guardian commenters, I wish to make an apology. In April, I wrote about signing up for a Tough Mudder, a 12-mile assault course involving ice baths and electrocution and other grisly nonsense. I mentioned how reticent I had been to commit to something so gruelling. And many of you wrote comments underneath to tell me it wasn’t really all that bad.

Commenters, I should have listened to you. I should have listened when you told me that the high-altitude ultra-marathon you did barefoot across broken glass in Africa while repeatedly punching yourself in the face was harder. I should have listened when you told me I was middle-class and that I made you sick and that I should just get a job on a building site because that’s what you do and you’re better than me. I should have listened when you set up a series of fake accounts and used them to aggressively link to one of Tough Mudder’s direct competitors in all of your comments. I thought you were just being small-minded and deliberately contrary, like you are when you write “Why is this news?” underneath something that clearly isn’t a news story.

However, I will now concede that you may have had a point. The London South Tough Mudder 2013 race took place on Saturday, and it really wasn’t that tough. Or muddy. Or anywhere near London, for that matter. I’ll admit that I found elements of it hard, but that’s mainly because I’m still a vaguely out-of-shape idiot who hates heights and doesn’t realise that trying to breathe underwater is a silly idea. But it’s far from being The Toughest Event on the Planet, which is how it sells itself. I’ve only been running with any degree of enthusiasm for five months, and I have already completed harder events than this. Trying to work out where the car was parked afterwards was probably tougher than the race itself.

Instead, Tough Mudder is Disneyland. It’s Tesco. It’s a huge, slick, fiercely marketed moneymaking machine; a travelling funfair that sweeps around the country indulging tens of thousands of would-be soldier fantasies for tens of thousands of cushy-jobbed office workers who can’t be faffed with doing an Iron Man. It comes in, vacuums up your money and moves on. This weekend, approximately 20,000 people took part, each paying around £100 for the privilege. Even when you subtract insurance and the price of putting the thing together, it’s not a bad racket.

But would I do it again, despite these qualms? In a heartbeat. Yes, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re more of a customer than a participant – literally the last thing you see before taking a deep breath and submerging yourself in the Arctic Enema obstacle (essentially a load of ice in a skip) is an advert for cider – but it couldn’t have been better organised. What’s more, the atmosphere was fantastic. So much effort goes into reinforcing the notion of teamwork and camaraderie that there wasn’t a trace of the sniffy competitiveness you often get at these things.

Inevitably, my younger brother Pete – the person who bullied me into doing this in the first place – had the time of his life. He came along with a squadron of Mini-Petes, all topless and whooping and rubbing suntan lotion on to each other like the Top Gun volleyball scene never happened. He wore a vest for the race, pretty much for the sole purpose of ripping it off Hulk Hogan-style for photographers at the start line. At one stage he took an electrode to the head and apparently blacked out. I’m already bracing myself to hear that story get repeated every Christmas until one of us dies.

I was terrified of the Tough Mudder before it started. I’d heard that it took five hours to complete. I heard about the man who died in April. I had read the line in the waiver about the strong likelihood of broken bones. But it was fine. It was a lovely day out. We were all wrapped up in about two and a half hours. If you can run a reasonable distance, you could probably do the Tough Mudder without too many worries. Plus, every couple of miles they give you a banana. What could be better than that?

So now, commenters, I have a favour to ask. Despite myself, I think I might be a little bit into this. I’m already eyeing up other mud-type events for September. Nothing too crazy. I don’t want to race a horse or anything stupid like that. But I think I’d like to do something. So, readers, what should I try next?

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