Why Be Tough?

This past weekend I ran an increasingly popular race called "Tough Mudder."  It was a 12 mile obstacle course that included climbing over 9 foot walls, crawling through mud under barbed wire, jumping into an ice bath and running through hanging live wires while getting shocked by 10,000 volts.  They do it all over the country and each course is a little different.  The video below runs through each of the obstacles in the Seattle course:
My parents are wonderful about nodding and smiling when I tell them I'm going to do this sort of thing, but after watching the above this morning my dad asked a very valid question; why?  Is it just to tell people that you did it?  One could take the easy way out and simply quote Louie Armstrong, "If you have to ask, you'll never know."  But I fancy myself a writer so I thought the subject deserved a bit more than that.  I have two answers:
1.)  My friend Riley kept pestering me to sign up and telling me it would be awesome.  She often does mud runs, but rarely sends invites to do them with her and never more than once.  Since I never do them with her, now seemed like the time.  I paid for it before looking to see what it was.  A couple of months later she began to gush about it so I took a look and was a little taken aback by what the race entailed.  Of course by then I had already committed and I'm no quitter.
2.)  I think there's always a 'why?' element to amature adult athletic pursuits.  After all, you can be fit without running a marathon, you can reap the rewards of weight lifting without ever being able to do a pull-up, god knows there are safer team sports than ramming into other people at full speed on roller skates and there's pretty much no logical reason to go to trapeze school - ever.  I suspect that if you asked 100 people who do Cross Fit or roller derby or whatever other crazy thing you'd probably get 100 different responses; but they might fall into several categories.  I like to look good.  It feels good to be strong.  I like to show off my bruises.  It's fun.  I wish to be counted among the mighty survivors in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.  The list goes on.
And I do like to show off my bruises:

...and I've been known to brag, but really neither of those are enough to put myself through the pain of crazy workouts day after day, year after year.  What I do is think of a time about five years ago when I started telling folks I was going to run a marathon without being 100% (or even 60%) sure that I would ever pull off the feat.  I was overweight and weak and had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  It took two years to cross that finish line and prove to myself that a lot of hard work and determination along with great training buddies is all that's really required to get it done.
I'm not alone there.  Last Saturday I arrived at Tough Mudder with five teammates - all of whom have gone though huge physical transformations in the last year or two.  One lost 90 pounds after having her baby, another decided to be a body builder after years of inactivity and none of us have ever been what you'd call a rock star athlete.  For twelve miles we cheered, pushed and pulled each other over walls, through mud and over a half pipe, encouraged each other over mountains and across water and roared in pain and fear through electric shocks.  Twice.  We were neither the fastest nor the slowest and none of us could have done it on our own. 
In Marvel's "Captain America" one of the characters makes the following observation, "...a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion."  I have been weak.  In the decades of life to come, I'm sure I'll be weak again.  For today I like to think of these kinds of crazy pursuits as somewhat of an homage to the transformative power of lots and lots of exercise as well as the inevitable swiftness of age and the passing of youth and power.  For today I know that when I see an obstacle whether physical or otherwise, I can take a deep breath, size it up and take it on - come what may.
It's not just about the bruises.
<posted on 10.3.12>