Wind Tunnel Secrets EXPOSED! Mark Cote Spills the Beans on Cycling’s Future! | MGTV Interview

In this conversation, Mark Cote and Josh discuss the evolution of cycling aerodynamics and the challenges of finding gains in aerodynamics. They also delve into the process of building a wind tunnel at Specialized and the innovative designs that have been explored. The conversation touches on the future of aerodynamics, the role of wind tunnel testing in educating and convincing athletes, and the fashion aspect of aerodynamics. They also briefly discuss unexplored aero products and the role of body hair in aerodynamics. In this conversation, Mark and Josh discuss various innovative products and concepts in cycling, including aero stickers, dimples for aerodynamics, and the potential of self-spinning wheels. They also explore the challenges of bringing innovative products to market and the impact of marketing on sports. The conversation touches on the importance of filling in the space behind the stem, the fascination with aero socks, and the story of the Cobble Gobbler. They share their experiences with unsuccessful ideas and missed opportunities, as well as the difficulties of naming products in the industry.

Chapters
00:00 – Introduction and Background
02:21 – The Early Days of Cycling Aerodynamics
05:48 – The Evolution of Cycling Aerodynamics
07:43 – The Challenges of Finding Gains in Aerodynamics
09:56 – The Role of Wind Tunnel Testing
12:21 – Building a Wind Tunnel at Specialized
18:19 – Innovative Wind Tunnel Designs
21:38 – Exploring New Frontiers in Aerodynamics
25:11 – The Power of Hands-On Testing in the Wind Tunnel
30:03 – The Future of Aerodynamics and Helmet Design
35:55 – Using the Wind Tunnel to Educate and Convince Athletes
39:15 – The Fashion Aspect of Aerodynamics
40:26 – Unexplored Aero Products and the Role of Body Hair
40:54 – Innovative Products in Cycling
41:23 – Products That Could or Should Exist
42:04 – The Impact of Marketing on Sports
43:28 – The Limitations of Rules and Regulations
44:28 – The Potential of Aero Stickers
45:16 – The Science Behind Dimples and Aerodynamics
46:13 – Exploring Aero Concepts in Apparel
46:50 – Unsuccessful Ideas and Missed Opportunities
47:28 – The Impact of Shaved Legs on Aerodynamics
48:55 – The Influence of Naming and Branding
52:46 – The Concept of Self-Spinning Wheels
54:39 – The Challenges of Bringing Innovative Products to Market
56:59 – The Importance of Filling in the Space Behind the Stem
58:35 – The Fascination with Aero Socks
01:00:07 – The Magic Tire That Never Made It
01:02:28 – The Potential of Multi-Spoked Wheels
01:04:06 – The Challenges of Naming Products
01:07:36 – The Concept of Aero Hubs
01:09:32 – The Story of the Cobble Gobbler
01:12:08 – The Difficulty of Naming Products

Ask Josh Anything Episode #33 – Wind Tunnel Secrets – PART 1

Mark Cote on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbcote/

#SILCA #marginalgains #silcapursuitofperfection #MarkCote #windtunnel #AeroInnovation

All right marginal gains listeners uh really fun one today our last week we launched a Wind Tunnel episode part one uh of a plan two which I think judging by the success and the questions we’ve got it may become like part like six um but in the followup to that episode

Talking with hottie and fatty and like like oh who do we who do we know we can bring into the wind tunnel conversation like like oh my friend Mark not only knows more about this than any body I’ve ever known but he no longer does it for a living so he can

Actually talk so so we welcome today Mark Cody from uh from MIT uh from specialized and now he is at zwift uh where he can freely talk about wind tunnel testing because that’s not what he does all day uh every day Mark welcome to the show man it’s so good to

See you hey thanks this is uh quite a treat to be able to nerd out in uh with one of my former I don’t know like if You’ think industry colleagues competitors whatever we were at the time but I always had a massive respect for your obsession and Innovation Josh and

Nerding out about Arrow brings me back so uh yeah great to Great to talk well it has been a a while I mean I think what I I met you 0405 you were a student it woulding the right Brothers wi tunnel at MIT which was built in 1939 and I remember you and

Andy oring with bu Reese and CSC it was ion boso and Carlos sastra doing Wind Tunnel testing at our old wind tunnel yeah and that’s when we met that was I think that was my first like pro athlete wind tunnel test Josh long time ago oh

Wow okay so that was a that was a big one for all of us yeah that was our first time getting uh World Tour or I guess then they were or Pro Tour um teams into a tunnel in the States you know we had worked mostly with

Triathletes before that and I mean my God half the the European guys they didn’t believe in the Wind Tunnel or the aerodynamics and so you thank God for BJ ree like no I’m interested let’s do this yeah we had what Phil and Gerard were there and uh Kim Blair who’s running

That whole is is Kim still at MIT he’s he’s not my now he’s doing stuff at Purdue um I think he’s a professor Purdue right now he and I were just messaging the other day he just uh Kim Blair is sports scientist uh just kind of adviser to a bunch of students that

Have up and come but hey he’s working with the Purdue group oh so yeah oh man okay I gotta look at I’m up there like once a month with we work with uh janers Monson and his his group there we’re doing drive train friction and a

Bunch of other cool stuff like that so yeah it’d be great to pull Kim back back into the loop there but okay so you’re at MIT I think I’ve tried to hire you like right out of school and you what you were you went to Tesla for a while

And CLL and then I think I tried to hire you again and you went somewhere so I I think I’ll save everyone the pain and suffering but I think I’ve tried to hire you like five times and you turned me down all of them that’s generous things

Let me know now now I’m completely not usable for you in any way Josh but those early days were an interesting time I feel like there were um like 10 people on the planet as obsessed about these problems of aerodynamic science and the science was clear anybody that’s

Listening to this already knows it you know the largest proportion of force to overcome when you’re trying to move a bicycle uh is is wind unless you’re going up a really steep grade and so in that situation well if if a lot of people at that time weren’t really

Believing it man there’s a lot of opportunity on the table and so as an engineer you know the few of us that were obsessed on the thing that was invisible where everyone was saying doesn’t really matter you’re not going as fast as a Formula 1 car so who gives

A and all of these things are going on well that’s a that’s a fun time to be around hard to measure impossible to see but you’re enough of a nerd to know that it matters like that’s a great time to be alive yeah that’s a really good way yeah

We we talk a lot on this show about kind of the the hidden benefits of the the asymmetries and the nonlinearities of of the science but from just a a a competition perspective being able to deploy some of these things with athletes and and a team that

Were all all bought in in a world where no one else was bought in holy smokes was that powerful stuff I mean it you know it it’s a lot harder now and and I’d love to hear you I know certainly towards the end of my time uh you know

At zip it was like oh my God we’re we’re spending thousands of hours for sub percent um gain you know in some of these component areas and and um you know it’s a little different with rider position because you can kind of forever be going back in and tuning somebody but

What yeah I guess how was your experience towards the end of your your career in this space different from the beginning yeah I so I was around cycling aerodynamics explicitly as like I’ll call the first phase of my career for a good like 15 maybe 17 almost 20 years

From my undergraduate started in 2003 through when I departed specialized in 2020 um in the early days of it you speak to a lot of it Josh it’s athletes didn’t believe it they thought it was a photo shoot in a wind tunnel um and there were probably

Only five or 10 brands that that’s actually generous I’ll call it three to five brands that actually believed in the science and the other half that believed in the marketing and um and then I would also say there’re probably only a few tunnels or facilities that

Could measure very well so that was the early days and now you look at um I mean I I remember we did a big thing that specialized around a campaign called five minutes that was looking at if you wrote all the aerodynamic stuff versus the non- aerodynamic stuff so

Like what did venzo nibbly when the torto France on tarmac sl4 with non- AO Wheels with the ventilated helmet with just a regular kit uh non-integrated tires and rims and then you compare that to something of today that’s about a 15% difference in overarching power to go

The same exact speed right and that sounds crazy but like 15% off of equipment before we even adjusted the body position and um the reality is if you would have said that to an athlete in 2005 they would have called it and then asked for better wine at dinner

That night um after a windal test and when you say that over coffee or over that glass of wine at dinner now with an athlete they want to know more and they want to know the next thing they should do and should they get a a surgery on their scapula so their

Shoulders become more narrow like it’s it’s just ridiculous the um adaptation and commitment now from athletes versus 20 years ago there’s a lot of belief yeah yeah for sure for sure I I I’d say the big one I just coming from a test what less than in December with a team

And um everybody’s willingness now you’re like hey you need a 140 stem and a 32 CM bar and they’re all like oh absolutely okay I’m in like even two years ago nobody wanted to hear that um and but you you you put them on it you

Put them in there and my God the difference it’s you can’t deny it it’s an interesting thing if you think about it in the early days they can yeah go ahead sorry no no go you go I was just saying like it’s an interesting thing now if

You think about those early days was so much about convincing and compelling a population that was real and now it’s like like I bet when you go to the Wi tunnel now like you got to be on your aame because the expectation is oh don’t tell me what’s better or worse you got

To find me some gains like there’s some real real commitment here it’s a different it’s a different equation than it might have been in the early days and it’s certainly harder I mean the the Baseline starting point uh you know is a whole other world than it was

Even just five years ago um much less 15 you know yeah I I I truly miss those early days I mean you you could do almost anything and find huge gains for an athlete um and now it’s I mean there’s certainly some tests where you’re hours into it and finding almost

Nothing right or or the marketing side of the of the team that’s typically why you know why our company’s there right we’re there because the team has said you know hey the the sponsors bringing you know and I I don’t I never did this for any teams with you guys that

Specialized but I know I mean we get a lot of it now where you know we come in and kind of serve as like an Arbiter um you know is this real are they messing with us um does this sound plausible because he I mean you know how easy it

Is right the the marketing guy always looks at that one cherry-picked number and like this is going to save three minutes in 40K you’re like guys um there there is no more 3 minutes in 40K like so the thing that’s hard 30 seconds right now I was I was uh going

Back through that that you know the first podcast C you guys did on the Wind Tunnel side and I was thinking to I I had maybe a unique experience here and and I had some really fortunate benefits as a as a researcher here in that a lot

Of things you talked about in the last episode were about those that have to rent wind tunnel time and I’m sorry to say this in such a almost like hey well I had had this cool experience to the wind tunnels I worked at I didn’t have to look at the

Time clock so at MIT we could test like crazy and look I love the fac facility and it was amazing undergraduate research opportunity but that tunnel was built in 1939 um it’s since been torn down and rebuilt Mark tra there has has led the rebuild of just an incredible stud the

Art facility so I actually don’t know what’s going on in sports science there these days and then after beating my head against the wall and trying to convince anyone the business model of building a wind tunnel for sport I mean anyone no one wanted to give me money on

It I finally got to the point where Mike senard and the specialized team said yeah let’s do it um and there’s a whole story there if you want the inside baseball of how that tunnel actually came to fruition but regardless the point being is that when

You when you don’t have to check the time clock uh it kind of changes a bit of this calculus and so you’re talking about like well where are those gains or where are they not the things we did at specializ were around the the systemic gains of let’s put a 100 athletes

Through that same protocol and see how often these things show up not just one athlete let’s let’s put the same athlete through the same test protocol 5 days in a row or the same day 5 months one month apart so we can see do they continue to

Repeat because otherwise like if you go to you know for those that aren’t close to it or those that love to own budgets of companies you get $100,000 to go to a wind tunnel and it’s like you’ve just flown across the country with every single component you could think of to

Stand on a bathroom scale but by the way it’s the most complex bathroom scale you’ve ever seen um it’s in a gyroscope a top a rocket and it pivots around oh by the way make sure it’s super repeatable and figure out the best science you possibly can oh by the way

You’ve never actually seen the scale they won’t show you it’s under a floor it’s completely hidden oh by the way do great science and so you know I had the benefit in those two facilities to not have to deal with any of those challenges and or update the software

Update the hardware change the protocols and that I think was actually the uncork especially at Specialized for the learnings we could repeat we could do the same test with multiple different athletes and that’s where you could find that three minute gain Josh but then yeah then everybody has it and so then

It is very Formula 1 you only have that Innovation for one or two months or three months and then guess what the rest of the rest of the population figured it out yeah no that that’s a great point I think that you know certainly before I

Left SRAM we had actually and I would love to know you’re inside baseball cuz I I know we we’ actually contracted uh a guy actually here in Indie Bruce Ashcraft who designed and built the uh what are now the auto research tunnel here in Indie as well as the

Rainard um oh God it’s now the what Mercedes petronus tunnel um in the UK they sisters so they’re identical tunnels and he had designed and built those and we’ contracted him and he did a couple of kind of rough designs and estimates for us and we just just I I

Just couldn’t get couldn’t get the budget for it right um I think uh you know SRAM I mean God love them you know the big complex company they’re like well if you know we give this to you what are we G A give to rock shocks and

Like well I don’t know talk to them they but they’ve got suspension dinos already and we got you know I’m spending 200 Grand a year to go to the tunnel and like you said it’s you’re not always extracting 100% of the the value so yeah what was your your process to get that

Both sold or designed and then also sold right see I thought you were part of this story so let’s let’s do the abbreviated one we’ll probably not dwell too long but this one intersects Josh porner Mark Cody and Jordan rap World in terms of for folklore here okay so um

You know take us all back to the mid 2000s right there were several of us that all believed in this aerodynamics and I would you know I’ll short it but let’s say Steve had um which obviously the bond trigger guys and track were starting to believe it because of the partnership with with

Steve and his company and and then obviously yourself and everybody at zip the CLL cats um I gotta be honest specializ didn’t believe it yet I don’t think many of the frame manufacturers believed it well enough I not to say like there wasn’t belief but not like

Obsession and so you know selling all the different ways why should the sport of cycling have a facility Well what end up happening for me I was naive I was basically a little bit past internship so what do I have to lose I hadn’t really built a career yet i’ had been on

Specialized for a couple years I did Arrow kind of as a part-time consultancy from being an engineer and Industrial designer there and uh and I was a I was an early engineer I’m doing aluminum frames and just kind of figuring out how to put CAD together right and of course

But I’m naive so I I put plans I built out a three or four page plan of how to build a wind tunnel and I’m dropping it on Ben aper in the cmo’s desk and on Mike s’s desk and CEO and I have no fraking idea like what do I have to lose

And then it just kind of became a little bit more and more of an obsession so this H this thing happens on slow twitch where there’s a Motorsports facility shutting down in Southern California Swift Motorsports that was doing oh yeah I don’t know motorcycle testing or whatever and they were selling their

Wind tunnel as an auction and I was either you or Jordan that tagged me on a slow twitch post like we should buy it so we did I I went and talk to our head of facilities um Alfredo chardi and and said hey alfredo we should put in a bid

For this can you help me convince senyard and like Mike loves things like Penny on the dollars Etc and so these are all the things I should say on this podcast but why the hell not and so so as it turns out we put in a bid but a

Little bit late and there’s one other bidder and we lost the bid and the minimum bid I want to say was like 50 Grand and we’re talking 2ill million doll worth of equipment all their fans their balance their data acquisition everything Y and uh you know who the

Winning bidder was Steve head Steve yeah so I got it into sard’s head that because Steve was working with bontreger that Trek had just bought a wind tunnel oh and that is how I sold it nice um basically just and and the reality was uh you know Steve what a

What a like a Pioneer in this space that tunnel never got reassembled um I know those pieces still exist in some way shape or form but that ended up being enough of an impetus where I said hey look we lost this bid but here’s the design that we’ve kind of scoped out

It’s not going to be Pennies on the dollar but I think we should go through and I basically got to go ahead to build a budget and then went through a year of budgets that were unrealistic wouldn’t work couldn’t happen and then finally got to you can have this amount of

Budget and and you can have this amount of time and so we got like 6 months and yeah you know whatever that budget was to start to build and uh this was 2010 2011 and so two other things happened there that were really critical Chris U

Was finishing his PhD up at Stanford and we found him um he’s now at rivian but man we’re an amazing technologist and so he came in he was doing his PhD in computational flu Dynamics and came and helped design the tunnel as a super intern did an internship with us and uh

And then the second thing is we had a downturn in the business that year like the whole bike industry did so we bought the fans right before the budgets were locked so I had six fans sitting in a parking lot okay and that ended up being the uncor

To finish the project but that’s that’s the story of how the specialized wind tunnel came to fruition and then we we uh designed it built it and commissioned it in about six months so it was fast it’s a fast one wow that’s crazy yeah I honestly had had always wondered if

Bruce ended up going to you guys because what what you came up with was super close to one he put I think four Concepts together for us at like four price points and one of them was I mean when we saw that specialized Tunnel open was like oh I bet they worked with

Bruce on this because it it just looked it was so familiar um I I actually don’t know Bruce at all but sounds sounds like he had uh I think there’s a lot of similar thoughts that led to that design um you guys talked about it on the last

Podcast about a closure an open return tunnel and all of the perceived challenges with an open return tunnel we felt were mitigated if you could control the volume that it was put in and so you know an open open circum tunnel goes end to ends there’s a front there’s an inlet

Bell and there’s an exhaust where the fans are and at low speed these are environmental speeds like we’re talking the specialized tunnel goes 75 miles hour max um so at that speed if we could create a a a good controlled enough volume in the warehouse that we built it

In we felt that it would have most similarities to almost like a dual recirculating tunnel because effectively it’s exhausting into a big plenum it’s being sucked back in through the front so it’s kind of like you’ve created these these kind of circulating forces and so um we found that to be true the

Wind was actually not the hard part the balance is the hard part so yeah well and if you if you have unlimited access I think the thing that kills you with you know certainly all of the the open return tunnels I’ve ever wor you know it’s A2 is a prime example

Right you’re mid-run you’re like ah somebody opened a door you and you know like opening the door just like completely blows everything apart and you’re like you know I’m paying how much money for this and now we but but yeah I mean if you I’ll tell you and I don’t

Think I’ve ever told this story before but the Michael Hall uh who was at zp at the time and and Bruce the the the the golden I mean the like you know $30 million wind tunnel like one that they they wanted the two of them work together on and conceptually I to this

Day still in love with this idea but essentially um kind of an open nozzle tunnel imagine so you build a giant circular building right like a a big circular Dome where you have the building and you’ve got the balance isolated on like a concrete pedestal in the center and then essentially giant

Sing rings where you rotate the uh the actual tunnel around the rider and essentially like thinking of all the stuff you could do on the balance side if the balance was fixed to Earth and the volume could move um or or essentially the flow Direction could

Move and uh man they came up with some really cool stuff and I mean instrumentation and I mean you you get all this stuff and I I to this day just think of like oh that would blow people’s mind mindes that would have been so cool but uh but you know for $30

Million it better be pretty freaking cool that’s always been the tricky part in the economics and and I I’m sure you felt it too Josh through this period of time um we were talking about wind tunnel testing we still are at a moment in time where oh now we’re talking

About Ai and CFT and so you know what’s the point of a wind tunnel when outdoor tastic power meters are are ubiquitous there’s now commercial products to measure aerodynamics outside I mean that didn’t exist those were all R&D projects back in the early 2000s um and cfd is so

Powerful and you know we’re going to hit the computational singularity in the next 20 years or whoever wants to forecast that so what the heck is the point of a win tunnel and the reality is even if the outdoor testing is great or a Vel Drome is is fantastic and cfd can

Predict uh you said this really well in the last podcast you know that being able to calibrate that to to controlled actual results to make sure they’re real the wind tunnel I still say if I could only have one tool I would choose the wind

Tunnel overall three as long as I had at least a power meter to check outside and that might not be a popular thing if you’re going to ask a lot of Engineers today but after you know I I was doing for before this podcast I was checking

In how many hours I think I spent in tunnels over that 20 years and I think I’ve broken about 10,000 in testing and about 5,000 in developments of facilities and in doing that the reality is I’m probably way less efficient than you or the others in this space Josh but

We tested everything so like that door opening at A2 you better bet it specialized the first year I was like no one walk in front of the inlet Bell and then we ran a week of testing where all we did was have people walk in front of

The inet Bell so we could figure out what would be the changes and Y can we do 30 second tests or 27 second test or you know and all of that protocol development allowed us to figure out okay what’s the design of facility what’s the design of the protocol what

Is the iteration of the athlete or the piece of Hardware that allows us to do all these things so yeah you know the reality is we all want that $30 million facility and what we got it’s kind of like Josh you could make uh $50 million

A day but you have to work 22 hours a day for the rest of your life okay well I have an amazing facility but do I actually have the ability to test all the different iterations and get it all down uh we we actually took the path of simple

Robust and the ability to just we did Tuesday night intern sessions in the Wind Tunnel come up with any idea you want and let’s see if there’s a result because then we got to the point where time wasn’t the issue the ideas were and that’s that’s where I think a lot of the

Really cool Innovation comes oh yeah I agree no I was super jealous of that I mean yeah I’ll agree with your I’m jealous of it now Josh would be yeah but I’ll I’ll agree also with your you know if you could only have one it it

Would be a tunnel and I think the you know I mean someone who’s also spent a a ton thousands of hours in cfd and and that to s’s credit the thing they did buy us was a a small supercomputer to run cfd and you know that resulted in

That work we did with Matt goo and and three aiaa papers and I mean just tons of stuff but I think for and you get this but for the average person I mean it you you still have to cat it and mesh it and put it I mean it

The some of the the mo certainly the most fun but truly some of the best most creative ideas I’ve ever had were in real time in the tunnel where you you know you know it’s good when somebody’s like who’s got clay right and then like like something’s happened and next thing you

Know you’ve got like you know some pocket knives and some clay and some you know um foil tape and you you know I actually designed a a helmet once for Floyd Landis that catlike built and we we designed it out of computer Punch Cards that were at the in a box at the

San Diego wind tunnel we had we had duct tape Punch Cards and clay and we built a helmet that was a flipping fast helmet that they turned into a production product and and the reality it’s those interactions like go ahead those are the things that where the Innovations really come from

And oh yeah I love it and and and don’t under sell like oh cool you know Shram gave us cfd Josh you and and the team were the Forefront leaders in product design with computational fluid dynamics no questions asked like I don’t think that the textures that exist on uh

Carbon manufactured components today would exist if it wasn’t for what you guys drove um and then all the things you’re talking about of like those big aha moments like for example this bike behind me that shiv was cam Piper igmar young nickel and Chris U with balsawood

Uh pieces of paper and just kind of drawing out what if we put a sale where can we put a sale on this bike that no one’s done before and how do we make the thing basically fly itself in a crosswind and that didn’t start in cfd

And the fun fact is it started with that and then the shapes that came off that shiv led to the tarmac sl7 the venge oh a wrong order venge sl7 and now the sl8 all came off of balsawood and manila folders and packing tape on that on that project on the Shi

So yeah it’s it’s the best stuff right it you talking about manila folders and my Punch Cards I mean that really you know I I talk to students always try to talk about you know you got to think like with aerodynamics right it so much of this is like that first derivative of

Curvature right it’s like it’s not the curvature as much as the rate of change of the curvature and it took me a while to to really realizing it might have been something I read it might have been drla but one of the old like you know RC

Airplane guys you they’re like like the something about a thick enough paper really has a very controlled rate of change of curvature when you work with it and tends to lend itself towards giving you you know nice shapes can’t be too thick can’t be too thin um but it it it’s so

Funny to hear because it is it’s like that Manila uh folder thickness it’s like you just have to be really careful with it but in making it take shapes that you were really careful with I think the air flow sees it similarly it just always always struck

Me as one of those weird things of like you know how is so much of this related to paper well my God I so many things I can think of were designed with about that thickness of paper whatever I don’t even know what what that thickness would

Be called it makes me think about the like the kind of Innovation path that’s happened on frame and just Arrow design in general and if you you know think back to uh late 90s and early 2000s Arrow frames we’re still into the early carbon composits phase um of being able to

Shape whatever we want to we’re still talking in nacka profiles Etc like oh we know airplanes are fast so we’re going to use airplane designs and then what you just spoke to is now if you look at it today it’s about being able to manipulate the shape to control the wind

In the right ways and we’re at a whole different precipice as an industry you know and I’ll give there’s 20 30 companies I would give credit to that are doing really good work now whereas I think there are only less than a handful 20 years ago that

That honestly could could do this in in a meaningful way and so it makes me think about what the next stage is um it it’s always the question you get oh well you’ve already found the end of it we’re only finding that last 1% well then change the Paradigm again it’s all still

The same equation but what’s the next major thing that can solve so um the aerot team and specializes started to shift towards thermal um I still think there’s a decent bit of drag left but it’s going to be a different iteration of drag um and uh you know the next phas

Is especially with the UCI rules changing on frame shapes Etc there’s still single digigit percentage of power savings available in equipment today um I still think that there’s mid singled digit total power on teams as a system because not every athlete is fully optimized not every athlete is fully

Believing in this so we think that we’ve reached the end I think we’re just at the next iteration yeah I think that that’s a really good point yeah I I will say I’ve U just the handful of teams I visited in this winter and the kind of the run up

Into the season um say disappointed isn’t the word but the the the rules changed and the bikes haven’t really yet so I’m I’m hoping there’s a whole slew of stuff coming um you know in that like two three weeks before the tour front where everybody really shows off the

Stuff but I’ve I’ve been Hands-On now with with two of the biggest world tour team um TT bikes for this season and it’s like oh that’s iterative you know nobody’s really pushing it um 100% agree with you thermal man that’s that’s the next Frontier and I think like this this

Next generation of wearables um some of the stuff we’re learning from that is is going to be super fascinating um and then yeah to to your point of like 100% buyin And 100% optimization um yeah we’re we’re just definitely not there yet you know oh yeah that guy doesn’t like those shoes

Well those shoes are a big deal right or that guy doesn’t like that helmet I’d say you know helmet’s probably the the last one I know is a major frustration um of a lot of the technical people and a lot the team team that we work with

Where it’s like yeah we know they should be wearing this one but they want to wear this one cuz it’s lighter and it’s we’re that’s probably one of the last places where we’re really battling this weight arrow thing and and I think that’s just going to take I think better

Designs but also better education be like no no this this thing that’s Arrow it it’s almost as light and as well ventilated or you know within a couple percent or whatever that messaging um has to be so you you kind of mentioned this earlier but yeah talk to me about how

Did you guys use the tunnel there in that sort of educational um convincing stage with the ath to me that always felt like it would be like one of the most powerful pieces of it like hey not only can we test this but we can bring all of you here over

And over again to make you believe in it too I’d like to act like the convincing phase is over but it probably isn’t because it’s still bit of science that’s invisible so it’s probably never really going away um yeah when the tunnel was built it was the it was conceived around

Kind of three key things it was about product Innovation sure everybody expects that it’s that or specializ is a big marketing engine so the reality is like product R&D we were investing half a million dollars a year in wi tunnel time okay what if we did it on our own

Um it was around athlete and performance testing and so at the time our roster between Mountain and pro Ries and triathletes Etc was probably a little over 100 athletes just on the global team let Al even our Market level team so it was about on that scale and and

Then um a thing that I think is still very unique about specializ is amazing there is a uh internal university called specialized bicycle components University or sbcu that is about educating retail staff about the technical uh elements of product there’s a full fit school that has been built

Out with retool and body geometry fit in the past and now body geometry products and um and that entire Arsenal meant that we had 4,000 retail staff through that facility in the first three years so 4,000 retailers that are all talking arrow on the floor and so now I’m you

Know I’m kind of going on a tangent towards what does this mean from the industry standpoint but now if you go back to in the pros standpoint like Paula Finley was just in the Wind Tunnel at specializ and I messaged her it’s her second uh tranch as a specialized

Athlete she was itu in her first trunch she’s been through the wind tunnel now I think it was either fifth or sixth time in the wind tunnel and you know as an individual athlete that has been able to kind of continue to reinvent herself and show results well then you know that

Talk happens on the side and it’s less about a photo shoot it’s more about what’ you learn this time and Tim Dawn was really so on the traon side maybe a little bit more adaptable on the pro side we created one to two camps per

Year so it was always like the new the new stuff like okay roget just join Bora I know he’s in the Wind Tunnel pretty pretty recently or will be in the new year I don’t know the rough timing but you know usually there was a early team

Camp there was usually one right around like pre- Classics before things kicked off and then they would usually send a couple people that were off the cycle to do last minute either torr or worlds testing and so you might test with one of the B or C people on the team for one

Of the a Riders like hey let’s go verify that that wheel entire thing is really good and so in that we effectively created three moments for any one of the top Pro Tour teams and then it it really pivoted so if the coaches and the sports directors or even

The technical directors like early days with quickstep Ralph alag who I know has been across many teams but he was that uh quickstep of the team at the time super super impactful because people trusted his choice so it’s a bit of um having people inconsistently getting the

Word of mouth and honestly like any product our wi tunnel testing was a product it needed to deliver results like there’s no BS about it we make athletes faster that was the target yep yeah that’s a great I mean having that the more holistic view right it’s

It gives you a lot more opportunity to soft sell um and you know and in time the results clearly speak for themselves um having said that were you were you involved in the helmet that has the hoodie thing with that no taking this in another Direction every so you talk about uh the

Next Frontier of aerodynamics and fashion and guess what the helmet matters because people care what touches their hair uh I was not part of that project I can’t speak to its technical Merit I can’t speak to its fashion Merit I’m not uh wasn’t across it but um I

Understand the concepts of what the team was trying to solve for and all you know the backstory on helmets um and this is it’s a little bit damning if you’re in the market to buy an arrow helmet but the reality is uh there are some helmets

That work for a lot of different body shapes and head shapes and body positions And Then There are some that are really made for a specific type of body shape body position head between arms Etc and so you know the the predecessors to that the new specialized

Helmet with the with the ball of clava Etc the predecessors we were trying to make more and more versatile to multiple head positions and multiple because you know here’s here’s the reality you work at a helmet company not even a bike company that does helmets but a helmet

Company and a project like that is a million dollars minimum like it could be upwards of even five million when you’re all done right in terms of tooling R&D time uh testing right and and the reality is like it’s a big big cerification all that yeah yeah and and also like you

Think you’re only building one of them depending upon which brand it is like for example the uh um the McLaren helmet that we did that it was code named tt4 the specialized TT with McLaren that helmet the original one was only made for C certification um so it was

Actually an issue if you came and race in the US wearing that helmet it didn’t pass cpsc and so like there’s a few different things here where you know it’s a it’s a bummer to the market but it’s the reality of the business these are big big projects uh so my my guess

Is based upon a lot of the optimization that the teams had been doing with specializ the body positions and head positions really drove that nice thick rim to be a turbulator to to um turbul the airflow going over the shoulders that’s my hypothesis of what that that

Helmet is doing um and then otherwise a lot of clearance between the helmet and the inside of the head and so everybody’s been looking at the crazy track bikes and seeing the forks split out and the seat stay split out out that’s all so that a wheel can okay the

Wheel spinning so it’s a whole different thing but regardless it’s creating space so that you effectively make two air foils that are the helmet you’ve turbulated here so it goes over the shoulders and then the rest of the helmet make it as Tiny as possible and

I’m pretty sure that’s where a lot of the thought is on that new helmet yeah yeah yeah I always tell everybody I you know every time we put a swim cap on a rider under a helmet they go faster it’s just nobody wants to ride

Like that um so it’s like I I get the science but it just unfortunate I will speak to the fashion aspect of it I’m not a fan I don’t like tall socks either so you know it’s people people can pick on me um but you made and my world the UCI rule would

Be no rule uh no we only sell 19 CM socks that’s my limit people want them taller I’m like no night like that is as tall as they get and I I got in trouble on slow twitch someone said why why don’t you make what do they call them the ones

That go up to the knees I I was a total jerk but I said because my self-respect wouldn’t allow me to sell that product and uh like I just I I get it they work I mean we’ve made prototypes they work really well I just I just don’t want to be part of

Pushing that onto the industry like like if they said in a room like hey who’s responsible for this like I do not want to be the guy in the corner like oh do I raise my hand is that me no that’s I I just want this is the this is the

UNR rule of the chief aerodynamicist in Industry Josh is exactly what you just said because we could make the fastest thing in the world and ruin the sport forever in terms of the sex appeal and that would be awful and and it makes me think about like kind of two two uh

Meaningful tangents here one we just talked a little bit about hair which then naturally falls into body hair we should go there for a second and then the second piece was around like The Arrow products that existed but never stuck and I’m curious of of those that are in

Your brain because I think why don’t we go there and then we’ll come back to hair because hair unfortunately everything in aerodynamics devolves to body hair with my history in some way shape or form and we’ll get to that but like what are the what are the arrow

Products that that you think should have happened but but didn’t or maybe could still like and I I’ll I’ll start with one so Nike did these turbulators for I don’t know if it was the 2012 or 2016 Olympics for like track and field where they did it was like a turbulator was

Almost like a sticker that they put on the legs and I don’t know if it came out of breaking too so it must have been 2016 but that has always been you know we have some cycling roles we can’t really cut across but that’s why these tall socks yes sorry Beyond 19 cmets

Does work uh but you know like that’s why these things have come up um are there any products that you think could or should exist that just never really happened oh man the should exist is a I’ll tell you that I mean although I think we mentioned the last one the um

The body fairings right that’s one of those I I totally get it they totally work I’ve seen half a dozen companies over the year do it but I just that’s like that’s like 10 times worse than tall socks in my mind so it’s like you know like you said like

Like we could single-handedly kill the sport you know like I I do not want like you know 14-year-olds at like the Barnes & Noble opening a cycling magazine and seeing that and being like oh God no that’s uh and I’ll tell you my story on

This and and I’ve told it to him him personally but when I was getting into cycling I uh you know Greg Lon that 89 tour win that Bia Chrono Strada right I mean that was just like like the thing that pulled me into the sport like I

Want that bicycle and uh and as I was getting into it like oh man Triathlon there’s so much cool bike stuff and maybe I want to do Triathlon and you know you have a tri background and I bought a triathlon magazine at the bookstore when bookstores existed and I

Brought it home and I opened it and the opening cover was a two-page spread of Kenny soua in a neon yellow like manini laying in front of his like Nishiki whatever and I just remember in that moment being like Oh yeah I this is not

For me like like and so years later I met I met Kenny who’s an amazing triathlete with this amazing career but I said like you single-handedly kept me out of the sport of triathlon with that ad and uh but I think of that often throughout my career

Like like oh my God we all have the power to be that to somebody like I don’t want to be somebody’s Kenny Souza so so socks are limited to 19 No taller this is this is where we have rules and limits yeah yeah I I would be fine if

The UCI said there are no rules except socks can’t be taller than this and and and maybe a few other things but um your your thing about the body stickers though so you know obviously from speed skating we had those like seon turbulators that became stick on

Turbulators um you know I still I think it’s I think it expires here soon but yeah andyo and I have the patent for The dimple wheel surface and all that and so probably twice a year to this day somebody comes to me with a some sort of like um turbulator sticker package that

They want to know like like will this violate your patent if we sell this or whatever and I don’t think any of them have ever been successful um but I do Wonder with the the ever improving state of of like field Arrow sensors um and and you know they they just updated uh

Al um uh golden cheetah right and so you know all the the way all of that stuff is is improving I wonder if if maybe that doesn’t become a a future product category that begins to work you know I think historically I’ve always just told people like like hey just putting them

There doesn’t guarantee any sort of performance right you you could just as well be making it worse um as making it better and so if you’re going to do it you need to have a way to validate it um and you know thus far none of those

Sticker companies ever have but you know like you said a couple years from now we might be in a spot where I could sell you a sticker kit and you move it around and maybe you find something you know yeah it’s a tricky one and it’s an interesting space And for those that

Don’t get the benefit of looking at cylinders and winon all the time um you know I always come back to like the typical thing okay why do a golf ball have dimples well if you if if you made a golf ball vertical and it’s just a

Cylinder as opposed to a sphere and it wasn’t rotating what would you do you’d put a some type of Ridge or some type of indent probably about 30% of the cord length up to the front it would trip the air flow pulls it back behind it and in

Doing that you decrease the drag of the object that’s what we’re really talking about here well when you have big cylinders the upper arm or the lower leg just blasting through the air at 20 to 30 m hour it’s the same problem and so you know Nike was doing this with with

Uh back in speed skating with cat Kyle and the the the original like speed suits back in the 2000 days and then it’s been the same problem that’s come up over and over again so yeah I it’s a hard one to validate and you can mess it

Up but it’s also pretty meaningful if you can make big cylinders work better through air um that’s always been one and then you know uci’s always been tight on the skin suits but like that that little batwing moment that we had between the the arm that was just

It massit if you there was that made I still have one from the late 80s that made a full one that went from the elbow all the way back to like below the Bell button it was wild um didn’t work at all we tested in the Wind Tunnel actually

Catch it caught air it was like a square suit as opposed to it did not work but the the concepts um yeah there’s a lot still on the apparel side that’s interesting um have you I’m gonna tell one that’s following me back yeah

Goad no no you go go I was going to say I was going to tell you one that that’s been following me around for a while and then see if if you’ve had any that have followed you too Josh we we had uh now now retired but a super awesome athlete

Jesse Thomas that was uh in the early days of Instagram really doing it right in terms of his content he’s like all right we’re in a win ton on the specializ let’s finally answer the shave legs thing and we thought he was coming coming in and we were just going to do a

Test and optimize we did two really cool tests with Jesse that day first one is he wanted to do a full half Iron Man while we measured the whole time so we did handouts with water we did like him getting out of it to stretches back so

We did a full 320 Watts for whatever that is 2 hours and 8 minutes or whatever he was doing in the Wind Tunnel head down measuring his drag the whole time super super cool test anybody doesn’t know Jesse he’s a Stanford grad he’s he’s colloquial as a marketer but

Guess what he’s nerdy as yeah yeah super super smart um yeah and then the second thing we did was was we did shave legs and um as smart as Jesse is he’s also that hairy and so he was super high on the Chewbacca scale um and we

Honestly thought that the tunnel had an issue cuz we tossed him in he had just done this long test he did his Baseline kind of you know control position we shaved his leg well he shaved his legs I didn’t I didn’t shave his legs and uh

And then put him back in the wind tunnel and the drop was insane I don’t remember what it was but it was over a minute over 40K or something like that and uh and then that turned into I want to call it a three-month Obsession on shave legs

We tested 11 athletes in the next several months showed consistent gains the shave legs were we found no athlete where shave legs was worse and the variation was somewhere between I don’t know 30 seconds up to 990 seconds over 40K difference was pretty substantial yeah and so I’ll close on this to just

Say one shave legs matters and then two that hair test because we were youtubing all this stuff at the time turned into the thing that followed me for the next decade shave my beard do this mustache faster should I like is my mullet just good for the party or is it good for

Speed have you had any nerdy Arrow things that have followed you for the last 20 years that people ask you on the street oh man uh I mean for for me it’s totally dimples right people like have put dimples on everything and they and and some of those have been really

Honestly a little bit awkward I mean I you know back when I was still adip one of the helmet companies came they they’re like oh look we dimpled the front of our helmet for you and I’m like you know you’re what’s your initial Instinct of like well well that’s

Exactly the wrong place to use temples right partly is like well that’s not what they’re for man your helmet’s not spinning we like you said we we know where the flow is going to separate on that I that’s not the right use so dimples I I certainly can’t get away

From um and I would say the other one is is clothing you know I was lucky to be there um when I would say we kind of almost accidentally I mean I was with Steve Smith and the castelli guys in the early CSC days um when we started just playing

Around with wrinkles at first and like clothes pinning and tucking and and that sort of thing um and that really led to you know in some ways the beginning of like The Arrow crazy and you know I was there with Lance Armstrong and and Steve head when Nike brought this original

Swift spin suit that was you know 10 grand and didn’t work um and so you know I would say that me ending up with a you know I actually did that sock might have told the story here but I did that sock we we found it in the

Tunnel and I really just wanted one of the brands to use it and none of them believe that you could make a knit Aros sock that was actually fast and so um I made them and they worked and now we like the bulk of the Aeros socks that

Have Sil a tech are actually made by another brand um but yeah I mean the the Aeros sock thing continues to follow me and that I still at some level struggle to believe that it works as well as it does and yet every time you test it it’s

I mean it’s it’s a little bit like the first time I think I ever put an arrow top drop bar on a road bike and you’re like no that that can’t be you you know I like you just have a feel for these things right and you just see the drop

And you’re like it it’s too flat of a drop bar like how can that be that big and socks are the same way I mean you just you know it’s it’s like your your Chewbacca you know thing of you know you you just can’t help you have that

Feeling in like your stomach what these numbers should be and you you put the arrow socks on like really oh yeah you know do the quick math your head like yeah that that does match up what we generally see um and so I I would say

Those are probably the the big ones for me I will tell you and question I have for for you that I have my own good story with but you know is there something you found that was like could change everything and then you just couldn’t either get it to

Market get it to work in the production like what’s the The One That Got Away story that’s a that’s a good one uh I know I know like the AHA that I wish I would held on to the patent on for what it’s worth my in my my senior thesis at

MIT was um was a behind stem hydration system and so literally just a hydration system that goes behind the stem and you’d think you can’t get that patented there’s enough prior art there really wasn’t in the same space and if you go back in mid 2000s everyone had a

Traditional stem with a steerer and a big gaping hole behind that so I filled it with a you know the 3D printed hydration system and I had a you know I had a International Pad but didn’t go any deeper and I was naive little kid at

That point now look at any bike where the stem and top tube are not integrated like they all are integrated and so you know there was a very clear that one was more about where I was in my moment in time rather than uh the idea um

Something that I wanted to produce that that didn’t end up happening at any point uh I hate to be a situation where I I have to give credit where it’s due Mike senyard is just crazy enough enough to give a bunch of late 20year olds uh some free reign to make some cool

And so we had the benefit to make a lot of cool stuff Josh and we had very very smart developers and very very smart product managers and engineers and um I are there businesses or areas I think we could have improved and still can yeah for sure but there wasn’t if you asked

Me that question in 2009 I would have given you a list of 100 things asking me in 2024 I think we made most of those 100 things they might not be called Arrow anymore but the arrow is built into the product now and that was uh so

No but tell tell me your story because that’s a terrible answer for your perfect lead in so what’s what’s the thing that because somebody’s GNA listen to this and fund you they’re gonna fund you it’s going to be like the next thing yeah so no no so mine mine got away

Purely on we couldn’t make it um I’ll start though your your senior thesis was widely known and read and distributed and I will say that you know we we weren’t in that space at all at the time and so I mean I remember looking at that

And going oh my God somebody’s going to make a killing with this and then the second thought was all bikes are going to in two years all the bikes are going to incorporate this because the the savings are just too big I mean the the numberers it’s it’s a little bit like

The AOS socks right yeah filling in that Gap behind the stem holy what a huge deal that turned out to be right and so I was shocked when two years went by and four years went by and six years went by and almost nobody was doing it I

Mean it I just couldn’t believe how long it took all of the big Brands to just fill that in I mean and and like you said pretty much now um that’s just what bikes look like right but I was really yeah I I was shocked that nobody made

The hydration unit um and even more so that it took the bike companies you know I think CLL iterated three S Series Generations during that time period before they kind of got to F filling that in or fixing that um you know so it wasn’t like like

Oh we’ve we just updated the molds and we’ll we’ll get that in the next one I mean no they like all the big players did multiple lines so that and and we’ll for the YouTube video we’ll we’ll put up some images from I’m sure we you can

Send me your thesis but it’s um essentially what the gravel folks now use is like the little arrow top two bag you know Mark in a way yeah at the at the time it was called like the triathon side they they used something called a

Bento Box and it was you there was a company building those but you know just for context for everybody here and then we move off this topic if you put a bicycle in a wind tunnel just use a road bike for easy sense of it there’s you know the wind tunnels that were

Repeatable enough the things that you could change about almost any bike that would register his benefits Josh already hit one the bars what you could do to the tops big cylinder clean it up what could you do behind a stem um doing Arrow tubes Arrow Fork dropping the seat

Stays AR SE post bottle positioning that’s basically it I’m not saying there aren’t other things but like everything I just said is a 1 to 10% reduction in drag for the overall system of the bike just the bike itself bike wheels cranks Etc um and so in that from a macro sense

Like the behind the stem I don’t know if my data was great Josh I mean MIT wind tunnel was good but not great in terms of precision and repeatability um but I had forecast at the time ium it was like 5 to 8% of bike drag just by filling in

That space that’s probably about true on some bikes it might be upwards of 10% um and so if a bike at you know think about the bike is about 25% of the bike rider system that’s the round numbers so if you’re reducing that you’re talking two

And a half% of the aerodynamic drag as a total power system say it’s 80% now you’re talking whatever 1.6% of your power just from filling in that dumb area and so that’s how we do this kind of rough calculation does it matter or not you

Know yeah yeah well and I I’ll tell you I mean we we were at ARC with Dylan Johnson playing with bags six months ago and dropped the the the silk up version of that b which we don’t even make anymore um but dropped the Sila bag in

There and and saw I mean roughly your number so so it it still holds um you know if the if the bag is done well and and yeah and the the bike is still of that style right I mean so many of them have have gone to filling that in and

And certainly in the road racing side and and you know all the TT right you never see a Time Tri bike um that doesn’t have that sorted uh you know from the factory but but uh but yeah so I that that one still surprised me but

Um you you kind of just gave this secret away in this senior thesis and was like okay industry but uh but but the one that got away for me and this still just kind of breaks my heart to this day but we you know again Michael Hall I mentioned

Earlier you know he came from car racing and um he had experience with um shaving and grooving tires for race cars and you know we started doing Arrow Tire development and he came up with this tire that we called the magic Tire that um essentially I mean we shaved a

Tire to I mean more or less like a this kind of parabolic shape roughly um and my God you you could put that thing on any wheel and be at negative drag at like 7 and a half degrees I mean just boom uh you know 404 negative drag I mean it was

Just like holy and you know even on uh you know old school like box section rims they they were almost competitive with like modern Arrow Wheels when we put this tire on there and oh my God I spent um I bet I spent close to 100

Grand at lion Tire who’s the parent of Victoria with uh I you you know them right Rudy and and Renee and the crew over there I mean they’re just lovely lovely people but um we just couldn’t figure out how what the shape need needed to be molded like that when

It was at pressure under all of that casing tension that it would have that final shape right cuz it’s you know you mold it as one thing but of course it it it grows it twists it moves it it changes shape and we we just went iteration after iteration and every one

Of those tires when you would make it for real and put it in the Wind Tunnel completely sucked it wasn’t even like like it was some Middle Ground you know it was like okay the you know the the magic Tire like okay break it out you

Know run it oh it’s beautiful you know and then you okay put the Proto yeah it’s terrible um did you end up going that before we were doing a lot of rolling resistance testing so yeah did Michael end up going and making a bunch of uh oneoff tires ultim for everybody

Then because I could see Michael just doing a side gig just building like du makes Classics tires and Michael Hall’s there in a garage making the Milan Sano tires for the next year like he he probably he probably should have and he and he’s got the personality for

We I remember we always teased him he he was the only guy when we made the 1080 um it was so much volume that you couldn’t we just couldn’t get the bladder figured out and Michael figured out how to hand seam with one of those like you know hand like plastic welders

He he could make bladders that worked and I remember we launched that product and I think there were like 12 wheels in the wild and all of them had been made by Michael and I remember one of our one of our distributors in Europe saying like well you know what’s what’s the

Availability and and Michael said something like well I can make one a day and I’m only about 500 units behind right now and so we we came home from that trip with like okay we got to figure out a new bladder technology but yeah that that guy just has a way about

Him with things like that we’re like oh man all those yeah oneoff Michael Hall products always amazing getting it to Market always a different story you do remind me of I have I have one that if if any enterprising Wheel company is listening and is interested we never

Built I always wanted to build it and the the science was never fully proven so somebody has to actually prove it um I think the Nimble crosswind was the closest to it but it was the hypothesis that in a in enough of a crosswind situation you could create a

Multi-spoked wheel that created enough torque off of the actual blades that it spun itself and that sounds simple in concept take a pin wheel blow air on it but take a pin wheel blow air on it at a 10% yaw a 10% apparent win and have it

Spin itself now to do that you have to make sure that it doesn’t add so much drag and a headon situation you also have to make sure that that torque doesn’t create any weird weird asymmetries because the front of the wheel is going into a different apparent

Speed than the back of the wheel and so it’s going to ride really weird um but that concept when we ran the rough just like back of the napkin Cals could have been material enough in certain windy conditions so I always thought that in the right conea day you would change the

Front and rear wheel based upon the conditions and it could be material on the order of 5 10 minutes over that course if you had all all the things need to be right the federations need to make sure that it’s legal I assume that if it actually worked it would be named

Illegal in the first three months by every Federation and if it didn’t work then it was a massive expense and the tooling and the and the and the so I always wanted to build the pin wheel um but I also never did the due diligence to see if anything I said is real

So yeah I’ll tell you that two two wheels that to this day kind of Torment me in in some deep place in my brain that nibble crosswind um like you said just had some really bizarre behavior compared to other wheels that it had that incredible kind of pin Wheeling effect um you know

We would later after we did all the cfd stuff and all that Center of pressure development we would later find that um you know like like you said you know you’re you’re essentially trading like translational drag for rotational drag in some ways but you were having these

Massive Center of pressure shifts to get there which is why that wheel for being a relatively shallow wheel um that wheel could be really terrifying and you know we I for years had thought oh man if we could if you could do this like merge a first generation 808 Rim onto sort of

That Hub right with that PIN Wheeling effect um and and we actually made a couple of prototypes and they were just the in the condition that you needed to you needed you wanted to ride that wheel in you did not want to ride that wheel exactly exactly right like five minutes

Of riding that wheel and people are like like I this is a ride I want off of um but that that wheel I think was fascinating in a bunch and then the other one and was very funny moment you know Steve H and I not generally did not

Get along and and we um I think in a lot of ways really pushed each other you know if Steve did something it’d really piss me off and I’d have to go do something better and vice versa um but you know for the number of years there

Tre would would bring both it was zip and head at the wind tunnel testing cuz we made made the disc wheel and he made the three-spoke wheel and um I remember one of the the early tests there somebody brought a mavik 3G if you remember that like the early mavic

Three-spoke wheel and it has this sort of like kind of big Hub thing right that’s got a really nice Arrow shape to it and I just remember was kind of funny uh Doug kusk who might even still be at Tre but he’s one of the engineers there

I think he found found this wheel and was like oh well you know Lance and all of them weren’t there yet and and Steve was usually with Lance cuz they were really good friends going way back and um we were just kind of ping around

Waiting for them to show up and we put that wheel in there and it smoked everything I mean it smoked r808 it smoked the head three spoke whatever and him just getting that look and be like like oh we should probably put this away and not run it when Steve’s here and but

Uh but you know I found one of those on eBay and and have run it a number of times and I mean that for being one of the original original Three spokes um that wheel is still competitive today if you if you run a you know a tire of the

Air a 20 mm Tire or whatever um and so that’s another one I I have looked at and thought Oh gosh if you could do some Modern rim tire interface work on the what’s otherwise the core of because that that wheel also had a pretty nice

Uh pin Wheeling effect I know at uh uh lswt in San Diego um I me you you could actually get that to essentially like a zero torque if not slight negative torque um even at pretty pretty low moderate um I think we just found the mission of this podcast Josh

Is that hopefully there’s one to five enterprising wheel companies or upand comers that are bored and have few projects because the things we’re talking about just to be clear enough proof that they work but man you got to optimize the hell out of them and make

Sure that they don’t work in just the smallest little condition cuz you could we could make the most amazing 6° yaw wheel that is terrible 0 to five and 7 to 15 and guess what you know like that’s always same thing we talked about on the helmets but that concept you’re

Talking about Josh on the the almost like an arrow Hub um that do you remember the specialized uh wheels that had the alloy alloy and carbon Hub that went out a little bit wider and it was a shorter spoke oh yeah I don’t remember what it was called yep that concept was

From that was the first of the Ralls right yeah not not a great first product um it was super super cool and it had a mix of industrial design and Engineering in a way that only Chris delusio could do and he was he was the engineer that

Let on it but the concept was around exactly what you said a narrow Arrow Hub works like a disc in the middle and then a rim if you can only put surface area somewhere do it in the rim but if you do it narrow in the hub it works too for

You know the engineers that are thinking about this well then you end up having a terrible spoke angle and really short spokes that have crazy stress concentrations where the threads are which is what the problem was with the specialized Wheels you crack those spokes left R and sideways um we had a

Bunch of problems but it made the Hub really arrow and so that specialized wheel was actually fast if you could pair it to I think we did we paired it to 808s and we even made one with a 1080 the spokes were like the spokes were like 50 mm long it was

The dumbest thing in the world and I think I still have a rear one that I’ve kept but it worked um it totally worked yeah oh man oh that’s funny for inside baseball you said crystalo and when I hear Chrystal luio one thing I can think of Cobble

Gobler hey so so the let’s give the concept we got to say CLE goer the concept of the suspension seat post was Chrystal luio the name is fully mine to blame and so um so yeah I don’t I don’t know why I’m admitting this on a recording but I feel

Terrible i’ve been I’ve been picking on CH hey I will I’ve been picking on Chris for years and I love Chris you should have been picking on me amazing yeah and he well and he’s been taking it so like this makes me like him even more he’s been taking that Chris well

He’s some man for one man Chris delusio is an expert of making carbon composits Flex or not Flex in every direction you want them to and so the product that we’re talking about here is a seat post that was done on the rou B when do we

Launch it after the sl4 so it would have been like somewhere like Circa 2013 through 20 I don’t know something like that mid mid 2010s um and it’s a SE post that had a little kind of shape to it that gave vertical compliance just in a

Local area yeah um and uh basically a Carbon Leaf Spring well we were in a meeting where we were talking about how to launch that re and at that time uh Chris U was fully in the Wind Tunnel was built we had an arrow team so I was in

Charge of marketing and in charge of uh Innovation but honestly The Innovation team was doing it without me so we were launching the rebe and and it was like what what can we say about this bike and like well it it gobbles the cobbles and

And I I think senard was in the room and he’s like that’s it that’s it we need to be more fun as a brand as the Cobble gobler and so so we’re like hey is anybody going to tell Mike that’s a terrible idea and like a few of us did

And he’s like nope that’s it that’s it it’s the Cobble gobler we need to be a more fun brand we’re doing it and and so so if anybody we were we were presenting that ruet to the press and I remember a Japanese journalist saying it gobbles

The cobbles what did it eat rocks and I was like yeah it eats rocks it’s good um and uh so you know then for the next two years we tried really hard to turn that one into like an acronym or just an abbreviation so it turned to CGR over

Time but that first generation post okay y hey you win some and you lose some uh you name a shiv and you name a cobble gobler um what can you do what can you do right so right naming is harder than era oh that is y i I would

Agree I I would totally agree with that those are always the worst hardest meetings what are we going to call this oh man respect to the copywriters respect to the copywriters and the the content creators it’s not uh not straightforward so y 100% awesome well Mark we’ve we’ve

Crossed our hour 10 I think I could go for another hour so we’ll have to have you back on here um but man this this has been a ton of fun to catch up we we didn’t even get to talk okay we’re definitely having you back on we didn’t

Even get to talk to you about like what you’re doing at zift and like all this other amazing stuff so promise me you’ll come back on I would love to do that and we were going to pick this up I would love to do that and if there ends up

Ever being like a uh an ask me anything just around like like a phone a friend about check out my arrow position or the fun things that you get do you still get those emails and Linkedin of like can you look at a picture of me from the

Side and tell me what to change about my back you know whatever I would love to nerd out more on Arrow yeah um oh yeah well thanks so much appreciate appreciate joining you this is fun you yeah no this was you when I just had a thought I every year I probably get

Half a dozen like PhD thesis maybe we maybe we make an episode around that we’d have to get approval from them but like hey let’s read these people these people’s thesis and and uh see where it goes so all right well we we’ll pick this up offline we’ll schedule the next

One but thanks Aon and uh it’s always great catching up with you absolute pleasure thanks Guys