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I think the disconnect here is that what you're describing is a person who signed up for checks notes a running club going on a difficult run. There's a clear disconnect between something like that and the kind of hazing people usually talk about, where the new members are harmed or humiliated by the rest of the group, and then go on to perpetuate that harm/humiliation to the next generation.

The really dangerous part of hazing is the ratchet effect. Hazing rituals like the ones I'm describing never get easier, they only get more harmful/humiliating with each successive generation, until you end up with shit like this. The only way to stop it is for a bigger outside organization to step in, set limits and enforce them. For example, modern military people will talk shit about how boot camp isn't as hard as it used to be, but that's because guys in the 80s were getting PTSD and permanent physical injuries from the shit the Vietnam vets were doing to them and the government had to put a stop to it.

maybe, just maybe, we don't need to engineer harmful situations to artificially "enhance" the bonding between groups of people? Maybe that's cult shit. Maybe the groups where it "went too far" are just natural steps up from the cool, normal, good experience you describe

I don't feel that strongly about the above, but saying you have to subject people to "unpleasant" stuff and haze them for group bonding to occur is a bridge too far. Just because you liked it doesn't mean thats the only way people bond. And to be clear, the bowling I was referring to would be more analogous to the bbq after in your example. Something fun and off topic to do together, with a little spice and competition to keep things moving, but enough social time to bond. Participating in a race or whatever feels a bit different than a hazing run designed to be unpleasant and used to gatekeep.

having one example of it being subjectively positive doesn't mean hazing is good or necessary in general

Well, looking into it further, there seems to be more recent research (from 2022) that contradicts what I recall reading sometime prior to that (somewhere around 2010 or so, iirc).

It seems like a lot comes down to definitions, too--my own college fraternity was a no-hazing organization, but I do recall seeing some stuff in the mandatory online class nationals made us take that said certain things we did counted as hazing (giving initiates nicknames, for one, and anything involving alcohol at all for another, even if non-alcoholic options were made available), so where one draws the line is likely to affect the results of any effort to study the effects.