Joyeur

After my first 26km of “fun,” enjoying a deliciously addictive blend of alkaloids and carcinogens.

It’s all about people here at Joyent. And creative approaches to performance optimization, among other things. Both of which I’ve taken to heart on a personal level by reducing my own wetware form factor by 15 percent since I started here. Granted, the system was pretty bloated by legacy architecture, so eradicating a few chronic bugs was all it really took. But still: Measurable, significant evidence supporting the thesis that improved diet and rigorous exercise yields positive results. Who knew?

Seriously, I realized shortly after arriving that I needed a lot more energy to keep up at the office, and that eating my way through three discount frozen dinners in a row for lunch like I’d been known to do when working part-time from home probably wouldn’t be the most appropriate behavior in public — much less with Ironman triathletes cruising the hallways.

Of course, this self-improvement stuff is a slippery slope. Having gotten just fit enough to be dangerous, my next mistake was signing up for the company’s endurance team knowing that I’d have to do something ridiculous like compete in a sprint-distance triathlon in 2011. My next mistake was trying to complete one at the gym on Boxing Day to see exactly what I was in for.

I’d already been running and biking, but not swimming, and none on the same day. But the nearest Sports Basement for which I’d just received a gift card for happened to be open until eight o’clock and across the street from the nearest 24 Hour Fitness with a pool. I had gotten into my old workout routine in October with few goals beyond not being such a layabout, and maybe looking a little better in jeans. But I figured if I was going to be training for a real race, I wanted to set a proper baseline to benchmark against.

And that’s how I ended up with my first pair of Speedos. In my defense, it all made perfect sense to me at the time. In retrospect, I’m surprised I didn’t hurt myself.

Because I honestly thought that twenty laps of a 25 meter pool for the one kilometer swim portion would be relatively easy right up to my third length when, gasping, I had to rest at the end of the lane. Swimming looks so easy, but is so hard! I made it through the distance, eventually. But in open water? I would have drowned.

I was looking forward to the bicycle leg, but then my left calf cramped up as I was setting the seat height. After fighting that off for the first ten kilometers, my right calf randomly cramped up something fierce. But, again and eventually, I made it through.

Finally, the run. The previous week, I had run five kilometers faster than I did in high school, so I figured the run would be no problem. Next lesson learned? After over an hour of intense exercise, it’s rather more difficult to keep the same pace. I also learned that I sound like a honking walrus when sucking wind. But what do you know, I finished that, too!

All told, it took about an hour and 34 minutes. And it certainly undid a lot of cookie-and-truffle related damage from the holidays. More importantly, it gave me the confidence to get out of bed this morning and bike down Market Street to join fellow Joyeurs for a team spin class. Naturally, I walked away with a new benchmark in the form of average watts generated on a stationary bike, which tickled my nerd centers and inspired a practical goal: A little improvement and I’ll be able to charge a Macbook Pro battery in half an hour!