I don't mean to brag, but I won three medals last month. Three whole medals. To put this achievement into perspective, that's three more medals than I managed to amass in the previous 32 and a half years of my life combined, not counting the time I deliberately bought a packet of plastic ones from Woolworths because my self-esteem was a bit low.
What did I do to deserve this mighty haul? Did I save a village from a fire? Did I throw myself on a grenade in a moment of extraordinary self-sacrificial bravery? Did I contribute anything – anything at all – to the advancement of anything? No. I went for a bit of a run. That's it. I went outside, jiggled around for an hour and came back with a medal. Who knew that was a thing? Turns out that if you go outside in some trainers these days, people will basically hurl medals at you until your spine buckles under the weight of ribbon. And to think, your grandad had to complete three hellish years of wartime service, never knowing if he'd ever see his home or his loved ones again, to win his medal. He could have just gone for a run instead.
I should probably point out that I didn't really want to win these medals in the first place. It's all because I'm training for a Tough Mudder challenge in June. For the uninitiated, Tough Mudder is a gruelling 12-mile military-style assault course where, among other things, you have to wade through nipple-high mud, submerge yourself in all manner of ice baths and (if I've got this bit right) willingly subject yourself to actual electrocution, all in the name of fun.
It doesn't sound fun, of course. It sounds crap. It sounds like a horrible post-millennial version of City Slickers, where enterprising sociopaths charge cushy-jobbed idiots to inflict suffering on themselves because their lives have become so sheltered and swaddled that playing at being a soldier seems like a perfectly acceptable way to spend their weekend. It's Fight Club, basically, but without any of the nasty bits where people actually punch you in the face. And, make no mistake, it's big business. Half a million people around the world took part in a Tough Mudder event last year, generating approximately £50m in revenue for the company's founders. If there's one thing people apparently love, it's using artificial jeopardy as a commodity. People are dumb.
From what I've been able to glean from the official Tough Mudder imagery, my co-competitors on the day will be bare-chested twentysomething males in ironic Rambo headbands, all yelling and whooping and posting obnoxious devil-horn selfies on Instagram. That's not me. That isn't my idea of fun. I like drinking tea and wearing jumpers and being inside quietly on my own. I went to Butlins recently, for God's sake, and found it slightly too lairy for my tastes. At this point, I honestly can't think of anything worse than doing Tough Mudder.
So why, if I hate the idea of it so much, am I taking part in it? For that, you can blame my little brother. Pete is the exact opposite of me. He left school at the earliest opportunity. He supports a football team. He follows The LAD Bible on Facebook. He appreciates the oeuvre of Micky Flanagan. He owns his own property. That property has a hot tub in it. It's hard to overstate how much Pete enjoys exercise, too. Approximately a third of his kitchen space is taken up with colossal tubs of intimidating muscle supplements called things like Donkeykick and Thunderpunch. His favourite story is the one where he went to a meeting and his bicep accidentally ripped through his shirt in front of his boss. He's one of my favourite people in the entire world, but he does have the teensiest air of steroid-inflicted murder-suicide about him. In short, he was born to do Tough Mudder.
When Pete found out about Tough Mudder, he started texting me. The first text read: "Fancy it?" Then, when I started playing for time, desperately hoping that he'd get bored and forget about it, I received a slightly more aggressive "Up for it?!" Then, after he woke me up on three consecutive nights with texts calling me a pussy, I snapped. Fine, I said, I'll do your stupid Tough Mudder. "Boom!!!" he texted back, and that was that.
Since then, I don't know what I've become. To train for Tough Mudder, I've started to develop a routine. Most mornings I'll wake up and stare accusingly at my trainers for an hour. Then I'll artlessly clump around Crystal Palace park, my face caked with snot. Finally I'll come home and complain about it bitterly for the rest of the day.
The medals I won were for 10k practice races, one of which involved wearing a desperately unflattering rabbit onesie made of nylon. I've also done a smaller assault course to prepare myself; a cold, wet 7km nightmare that left my lungs sore and my shins covered in scabs. But at least I didn't do as badly as my team-mate, who succumbed to hypothermia and had to spend half an hour wrapped in a foil sheet inside a sleeping bag inside a heated tent being tended to by medics.
That was just seven kilometres. Tough Mudder is going to be much, much longer than that. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready. I just want to sit down and eat pizza. Do they give out medals for that?
