Smart Athlete Podcast Ep. 55 - Jesse Frank - WIND TUNNEL SCIENCE

“I stick a lot of dogs in the wind tunnel. The wind tunnel, it’s a really nice space, it’s a clean space. And we have a nice viewing area for coaches and trainers and engineers to come and actually watch what’s going on inside the test section. And so when we’re doing product testing, the Specialized office in Morgan Hill California is a very dog-friendly office.

Occasionally, project managers and engineers will bring their dogs into the wind tunnel. And my rule mainly for personal entertainment is that the dog must go in the wind tunnel with the fans on for a few seconds just to see what it looks like with the fur waving in the wind and the dogs love it. It’s like sticking their face out of a car window without the danger of falling out of the car.”

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JESSE FUNK: Welcome to the Smart Athlete Podcast. I’m your host, Jesse Funk. My guest today has his master’s degree in integrative physiology. He is a human performance engineer at Specialized Bicycles. If you can tell by the background. If you’re just watching the audio, you’re missing out on all the bicycles in the background. He’s a triathlete. And again, if you’re not with us on YouTube, you’re missing out on the stellar mustache. Welcome to the show, Jesse Frank.

JESSE FRANK: Thank you, Jesse. I think I’d be remiss not to mention the fact you have an amazing name. Not only that but amazing initials too.

JESSE FUNK: I like ‘em. You know, and you too have somewhat oddly similar initials. For anybody that watched the episode with or watched or listened to the episode with Dan Feeney and his wife, Melissa Mazzo, I said that wrong. I always want to do that. Melissa knows Jessie and recommended we talked to him. He does a lot of cool stuff at Specialized so he’s a great fit for the show. I always have to ask, whenever somebody has such a stellar mustache, because I’m not capable of growing such a mustache. I just can’t get the facial hair going on. [crosstalk]

JESSE FRANK: Rub your face [??? 02:40].

JESSE FUNK: That’s the secret?

JESSE FRANK: That’s the secret, yeah.

JESSE FUNK: But does it make you faster? I mean, you’re in the wind tunnel.

JESSE FRANK: So, a little background on the current face situation. This is the first time I’ve seen my cheeks in almost six years. I’ve had a beard. Since like, 2012. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen my cheeks. And my hair was just getting so–

So, I also have a bit of a mullet going on. It’s kind of hard to tell. But my hair was just getting so long with the shelter in place orders and everything being closed that I finally needed to get some kind of haircut. And on social media, I follow a professional runner by the name of Craig Engels. He used to run at Ole Miss.

And a few months ago, he shaved off his mullet mustache combination but he had just the most glorious facial hair mullet that he would sport during his races. And I remember looking at that going I want to do that one day just refined. And finally had the excuse where I couldn’t get a haircut and my roommate was gonna do my haircut so I figured I might as well shave the mustache or shave the mullet. Oddly enough I could commit to the mullet, but we didn’t do the mustache originally.

And my was like, “Yeah, Jesse, can we shave the mustache?” And I said, “Matthew give me like 10 minutes. I’m pretty emotionally connected to my beard right now. I don’t know if I can do the mustache.” In like 10 minutes I came running down the stairs like, “Matthew, shave off my beard and the mustache before I regret this. Go, go, go, go.” So, that’s what’s going on now.

But to answer your question, in the wind tunnel before my time at Specialized, they did a series of body hair related tests in the wind tunnel; shaved arms, shaved legs, ponytails, braids, and beards. And they found that beards did not have an effect on aerodynamics. So, I would assume the mustache wouldn’t either. And I’m keeping it, keep both the mustache and the beard. I don’t like a freshly shaved Jesse. It doesn’t look so good.

JESSE FUNK: The best I could do is just like stubble and then it’s like patchy parts and I’m like, okay, I just, that’s what I do. So, I just ended up shaving. But yeah, so that study [??? 04:44] there in the wind tunnel, I think that was like, what 2014, somewhere around there.

JESSE FRANK: Somewhere around there. The wind tunnel started in 2013. So, just turned seven. And I don’t remember when they first started doing the wind tunnel videos. It was kind of a [??? 04:59] production by Mark Cody and Chris – the two guys that were in charge of really designing and developing that wind tunnel.

And the first athlete that actually tested with the leg hair started off this whole weird body hair portion of wind tunnel videos was Jesse Thomas with a theme here of the Jesse’s [??? 05:16] body hair. And so Jesse shaved his legs and they came up with what’s called the Chewbacca scale for how hairy you are.

Jesse Thomas is a very hairy man. So, he’s quite high on the Chewbacca scale. Before Jesse shooting his legs was something like 90 seconds faster over 40 kilometers, which [??? 05:36] like there’s no way that’s real, that’s a fluke. But you can’t put your leg hair back on after you shave it.

So, they have to go find other people and then end up getting I think six or more people into the wind tunnel to shave the legs and found that the ranges 50 to 90 seconds saved over 40K, average of 72 or something. So, yeah, lots of weird body hair stuff going back to 2013 or 2014.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah, up until that point, I was not a believer. I just– It’s kind of the culture in cycling to do it, but I was just like, this is dumb like there’s no– I’m not particularly hairy. I have a friend who is full Wookiee, but I don’t really have that much leg hair.

So, I’m like, yeah it’s not gonna make any difference. But then I’m also a mathematician, so I’m like, okay, well, the numbers are what the numbers are and there’s no reason to handicap myself. It’s like, take 10 minutes, shave your legs, it’s gonna be fine.

JESSE FRANK: Yeah, it grows back. It might be a little itchy, but it goes back.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we do all this like, I’ll say like mental calisthenics for all these various training methods and the pain we go through to get faster, it’s like well if I can get a free 30 seconds from shaving my legs, I’ll do it. No problem.

JESSE FRANK: Exactly. It’s easy, easy speed there.

JESSE FUNK: So, you’re working with the window now, have you thought of any other like, I’ll say odd, hope you know what I mean, parameters to try to test?

JESSE FRANK: We’ve tested people in the wind tunnel with like spray bottles to try and kept their jerseys wet versus not wet. I think that has an effect on the density of the air around them and also cooling. I stick a lot of dogs in the wind tunnel. The wind tunnel, it’s a really nice space, it’s a clean space.

And we have a nice viewing area for coaches and trainers and engineers to come and actually watch what’s going on inside the test section. And so when we’re doing product testing, the Specialized office in Morgan Hill California is a very dog-friendly office.

Occasionally, project managers and engineers will bring their dogs into the wind tunnel. And my rule mainly for personal entertainment is that the dog must go in the wind tunnel with the fans on for a few seconds just to see what it looks like with the fur waving in the wind and the dogs love it.

It’s like sticking their face out of a car window without the danger of falling out of the car. So, I stuck a lot of dogs in the wind tunnel. The weirdest thing I think of off the top of my head is the spray bottle stuff. Yeah, sorry, I don’t have a very juicy answer for that.

JESSE FUNK: No, I mean, dogs are good. Sticking dogs in the wind tunnel, that’s not like– I mean, you’re in a very unique position. It’s not like I can just decide, hey, I want to stick my dog in a wind tunnel.

JESSE FRANK: That’s true, yeah.

JESSE FUNK: I think maybe you become desensitized to your position…

JESSE FRANK: Yeah. Now that I’m actually– I’m in my garage. There’s a lot of bikes around here. I live with another Specialized employee and then a former Specialized employee. So, there’s lots of bikes. I’m looking at at one of my ebike. And it reminds me before my time at Specialized to design a rangefinder; the engineers actually stuck an ebike on a little red wagon, put some tarp down inside the wind tunnel and drew a hose into the wind tunnel and sprayed water to see how the pressure wave drew the water droplets back towards the bike and design the fender around that.

So, that’s a fun little experiment. Outside of the product side of things we, of course, have a lot of our pro athletes come into the wind tunnel. And because it’s our wind tunnel, we don’t have to worry about breaking things as much. Well, we have to worry about it, but it’s not as big of a deal since it’s our own stuff and not some third party wind tunnel. We can kind of play around or do whatever weird questions the athletes want to do.

And so we extended our test section so we can get five or six riders in the wind tunnel at the time. And there’s a wind tunnel video about this, we can only measure the aerodynamics on one rider and that’s the rider on the force balance. But if you put other athletes on rollers or trainers, you can look at the effects of baselining and drafting and see what order the sprint lead [??? 09:51] train should be, how far to the side you need to go to get out of the pressure wake.

If you’re a lead out man, and your sprinter is behind you, if you’re 10 centimeters, 20 centimeters off the side even slightly, how much is that going to have an effect on aerodynamics? And so you can look up, there’s a one time a video with Max [??? 10:09] and Fernando… both could go longer on Quickstep, but we did a fun test with them. And then I don’t think this video is– I don’t think this was a video but when Mark Cavendish was on Quickstep many years ago, we did the whole [??? 10:22] planning test as well.

JESSE FUNK: And so what are the numbers on it? Because I’ve tried to look them up before and don’t know exactly. Just before we got going, we were talking about like the dumb triathlete thing. So, I was just like, I don’t spend much time in pace lines. I’ve done a few draft-legal events, but there really is only I’ll say a handful but it’s not even a handful.

It’s like three or four of them and they’re pretty much invite only across the US for amateurs. So, I don’t spend much time doing that but it is a substantial amount of savings when you’re swimming behind somebody. Do you know the average, kind of off the top of your head what that looks like? [crosstalk]

JESSE FRANK: 10:59] of like 30 to 40% reduction, in drag depending on the size of the rider in front of you, your size, what exactly the wind is like, and where it’s coming from. But somewhere in that order of magnitude there. It’s a pretty significant difference for sure.

JESSE FUNK: Just looking at it and even experiencing it, I didn’t anticipate that you would have such an effect. Because you’re basically cruising– If I want to go out and go ride 25 miles an hour, like that’s pretty much my top line. I have yet to hit that for a full hour by myself, mid 24s I’ve done. But most of the times I’m riding probably mid 23, mid to high 23s just for my power output.

But it’s like, you get in that group, you can go 25+ easy, you just rotate, you’re going to take you know, a little bit of brunt to the front and then you rotate to the back and you’re all right. It’s just anybody who’s not running a paceline if you have the opportunity. It’s just a fun experience if nothing else.

JESSE FRANK: It’s super fun. Like I was saying before we started officially recording, we have group bike rides at Specialized every day. Well, in pre-COVID times we would have a group bike rides every day at 12:15. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday are super fast days, Friday being our Friday World Championships and whoever wins that race, we have a pseudo World Champion jersey they get to wear for the next week.

But we look at the Strava data from those three days, and the speeds are just like they’re stupid fast for someone who’s not used to seeing that. Before Specialized, I didn’t really ride hard in a pace liner in a peloton very much as a triathlete. So, you get to specialize, you’re doing 45 minutes and you’re averaging 26, 27 miles an hour on a good day. And you’re tired but you’re not like totally wiped. So, it’s a pretty awesome, fun experience to have for sure.

JESSE FUNK: So, I mean, I assume that at some point, because it seems like Specialized is probably a pretty cool place to work. So, I assume at some point, somebody’s giving you the green light to hop in the wind tunnel and kind of optimize your own position on your time trail bike.

JESSE FRANK: This is very true. Yes. There’s about three of us who get to run the wind tunnel. And originally it was just two of us. And the original two of us were both pretty into cycling and time trials. And so we would every couple months, just order some pizza in after the workday ended and test each other, because you need someone to run the wind tunnel and so on to be inside. It’s pretty hard to do as a one man job if you’re trying to test yourself.

And so, yeah, I’ve tested myself many times in the wind tunnel. I’m not particularly flexible. So, my position on my trial bike is quite high. I have pretty tight hamstrings and hips, so I can’t get very low, but I’m working on the shrug and working on getting my head [??? 13:59]. And actually when I first got to Specialized, it was just under a year after my one and only Ironman that I’d done. I did Ironman Louisville in 2016. I got to specialize, I still had my old TT helmet, I had my old time trial bike, the kit I wore in the Ironman. And a couple months into my job, I had Shiv, I have [??? 14:25], I had a TT helmet at my disposal.

So, I was curious, what is the difference in these pieces of equipment? I had seen the original [??? 14:33] marketing many years ago where they said you know, the original…plus the wheels, plus the skinsuit, plus innovate helmet would save you five minutes over 40K. And as a college student who was not particularly rich, and doesn’t like spending money, I was like no way that’s true.

That’s marketing BS. I don’t believe it. And so I had to, of course, see for myself when I got to Specialized and the difference between– Or switching to a Specialized Shiv, a [??? 15:02] TT helmet, Innovate skinsuit would have given me eight minutes of free speed at the Ironman, and I missed Kona by about eight minutes and 40 seconds. So, I kind of cried a little bit when I saw that, but definitely a believer now. Definitely a believer. It was a real smack in the face to make you believe it.

So, that was a cool first test to see and it’s also cool to toggle. You can toggle between pictures in like one position to the next. And positions are matched pretty much identically. It just looks like I’m changing clothes and changing bikes. So, it was a pretty cool test to do.

JESSE FUNK: So, thinking about, you’re talking about not being real flexible, one of the things I just I kind of seen some stuff on but I haven’t, I don’t feel like I’ve found a whole lot of definitive numbers or studies or at least extensive on this. It’s like basically the two kinds of I’ll say back styles, I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about, the curved back and flat back. Does that seem to make a significant difference? It seems– Like I have the curve back shape, I cannot get that flat profile. Does that seem to make a difference in terms of the kind of efficiency you can get with a rider? Or is it more about like how small you can get that frontal area?

JESSE FRANK: It’s definitely a combination. I think a lot of the interaction also has to do with how your helmet sits against your back. If your helmet sits pretty low, and you’re looking from the front, and you can see the hump and the curve of your back over your helmet, that’s probably not gonna be very fast.

But if for some reason you have a curve back and the top of the curve still sits in line with the back of the helmet or top of the helmet, it’s not going to be as big of a deal. We see a lot of differences in aerodynamics from head position and helmet. And so I personally think that flat back is not necessarily a good cute to have.

I haven’t tested directly like the same person, and only changing like cat-cow type [??? 17:03] position where you arch your back flat. I haven’t necessarily tested that on its own. But the thing I tell people, the easiest way you can get some improvement in aerodynamics is focus on your head. A lot of age groupers, a lot of people new to triathlon kind of ride like they’re a periscope on a submarine. [??? 17:21] position your head is kind of off, you’re looking for the pothole, you’re looking for the next coffee shop.

Right, you don’t want to have your head super high up. You want to drop your head as low as you can. So, really, you’re not seeing very far in front of you, maybe just six feet in front of you, keep that proper social distance, just look a little bit ahead of you, that’s all you need to see. And that’s the quickest, easiest way to drop your or to improve aerodynamics. And I think the curve back or flat back is more of a comfort issue.

JESSE FUNK: Okay. So, that’s why I always felt like that issue, the kind of like the turtling of the head is where my poor posture comes in to help me. So, when I was going through rehab and I mean physical rehab several years ago– [crosstalk] Yeah. So, I crashed at 70.3 Eagleman and I shattered my collarbone and had to have surgery and then go through physical rehab.

The lady that was working with me was like really trying to get me like straighten my neck out ‘cause I kind of have this like study for neck thing going on. So, it does not help the like nice straight line slightly I should have while running. But when I’m on the bike, my head just ducks down naturally. So, I’m like, you know, you win some you lose some.

JESSE FRANK: For sure. Give and take.

JESSE FUNK: So, you were talking about like, wet shirt, dry shirt kind of test you were doing. Can you talk about what you found, is that still classified?

JESSE FRANK: We’re still running some more tests on it, we haven’t seen huge differences to be honest. But we still want to kind of play around with our protocol and different materials and fabrics. So, something we’re actively researching once I can get back in the office. And that’s kind of the nice thing about having a wind tunnel is it was first built to be an Aerodynamics Research Center focused on aero, aero, aero.

But as we move through the years, we’re finding we can use the wind tunnel for more and more things and we can use it as like a thermal regulated environment. You know, we’re gonna add heater so we can make the wind tunnel super hot.

You know, we’re going to try and find a way to increase humidity and make it more of an environmental chamber to look at thermodynamics, especially as we head towards Tokyo, and hot weather races and figure out how we can improve athletes chances to stay cool and get a better performance in hot weather.

So, it’s really a multifaceted research center now, which is pretty fun. So, I’m excited to get back up there and start testing the wet versus dry jerseys and hot versus cold and all that fun stuff.

JESSE FUNK: Do you have any anticipation of when offices will– I assume everybody’s at home right now and then offices will open back up at some point?

JESSE FRANK: Everyone is at home. So, as I mentioned earlier, our headquarters is in Morgan Hill, California, which is in Santa Clara County, which is one of the harder-hit counties in the state of California as far as I know. And so Santa Clara shelter in place is still in effect right now.

And until they start opening up businesses, and easing up shelter in place, our office will be closed. Once it’s open up a little bit, we’re still only gonna allow essential personnel. So, those people that have equipment at the office that really needs to be at the office to do their day to day jobs.

So, someone like me. That being said, if you don’t need to go to the office to run a test, we’re still going to be encouraging everyone to work from home. And from what I hear, it doesn’t sound likely that everyone will be allowed back into the office until early fall into summer.

That’s what it seems like, it’s a moving target every day. So, we’ll see. Working from home has been kind of nice, but our work culture is pretty awesome. It’s an awesome group of people. So, I do miss seeing everyone and do miss the interactions we get at the office.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely something like I kind of run my own show. And the few people who work for me like Joe and I have another kind of assistant that does other things, that does the video editing and stuff for me. And so I don’t see them, they’re remote.

So, it’s like, I miss out on that social interaction by being at home. I’ve kind of adjusted to it, but like, I imagine if I worked at a place like Specialized, I feel like I’d feel kind of emotional effects from not being able to like see people as often.

JESSE FRANK: Totally. Luckily I have roommates so I get that social interaction. I think I’m a pretty social person. Maybe introverted-extrovert is the best way to describe me. I’m kind of in the middle there. So, I don’t think I could, I’d be doing very well if I didn’t have roommates during this whole time. But it does and I’ve been riding by myself since March 14th, and exercising by myself outside of ocean swims because I don’t like sharks. I want a buddy to get eaten first before me.

But I’ve been super careful with that being a bit of a Jewish mother about it with my asthma. But it’s great. There’s so many people– So, I live in Santa Cruz, it’s about an hour from the office, but many Specialized employees that live in the area that almost every ride I go on on the weekends or run, I’ll run into someone from the office. I’ll just get super excited. I’d be like an awkwardly far distance away and I start yelling and waving at them. “Hello, friend!” So, that’s pretty nice. It makes you appreciate your friendships and community a little bit more.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah. So, you’re in Santa Cruz. Have you done the 70.3 in Santa Cruz?

JESSE FRANK: I have. That was the first race I did in California, actually. Did that in 2017.

JESSE FUNK: I’ll have to work that out because that may be the year that I did Santa Cruz.

JESSE FRANK: Was that the year that it was delayed because of fog, and ended up being like, 800-meter swim?

JESSE FUNK: No. I don’t– Maybe it was because it was like zero– We were swimming around the pier, but there was like zero visibility. Sometimes you couldn’t even see the next buoy. There was so much fog.

JESSE FRANK: We didn’t go around the pier, they moved it to the northern side of the pier, and we just did a little triangle on the right side.

JESSE FUNK: Okay. So, it had to have been different years because the year I was out there, it was just, I mean, ridiculously foggy. And we got going on time– Actually, me and my friend Kevin, were out there doing– maybe it’s 2016 we were out there. And I think I was the next to last wave and he was the last wave and it was just chaos.

I mean, I don’t think I’d done an ocean swim before, number one. So, then I had to deal with the nice saltwater. And then it was you couldn’t see– the buoys were maybe 100 meters apart but you couldn’t even see the next buoy. The nicest thing was just you’ve got the pier on your right the whole time.

JESSE FRANK: Yep. Yeah, that’s famous Santa Cruz summer is it’s super foggy until 11, 12, one, two in the afternoon, and then it rolls off. And as someone who likes to get their workouts done in the morning it can be super frustrating, because I’ll wake up at 8:00 and want to go ride my bike and end up riding my bike because I don’t want to wait.

Like soon as I get home it clears up. I’m just like ugh, I want to be in the sunshine not riding through the mist and how I won by myself with no lights. So, it can be a bit nerve-wracking, but it’s been pretty nice so far this year. We’re just starting to get the fog rolling now, unfortunately.

JESSE FUNK: I think that’s probably one of the most scenic races I’ve done. There’s the section back in the woods, where like you go up the hills, do you know what I’m talking about?

JESSE FRANK: So, that was Swanton road. You must have done it 2016 because 2017 they took out Swanson road and it was just on the highway, because Swanson road, as beautiful as it is, is not a very great road surface. It’s a lot of potholes. Santa Cruz roads tend to be beautiful, but– [??? 25:20]

JESSE FUNK: There’s a lot of like hard downhills and turns. It’s more technical work back there, too. I was gonna say I actually took out some cones in the final turn getting back onto one.

JESSE FRANK: I believe it. Yeah. Yeah. [crosstalk]

JESSE FUNK: That sticks out in my mind just because it was you know, so you’re on one if anybody listening, if you’ve not done it or not been out there; you’re basically on like, a cliffside road next to the ocean. So, you stop paying attention to it, but you’ve got the kind of crashing of the waves in your ears the whole time you’re riding. And then as you dip off onto that side road back into the woods, everything is just ridiculously quiet in comparison. Like you could just hear other people’s breathing. Nobody was talking. It’s just like pedaling as hard as they could up a giant hill and just quiet. It was a really cool moment for me, it just sticks out in my mind.

JESSE FRANK: Yeah, it’s an awesome juxtaposition we have here in Santa Cruz. You can be in the water, on the coast, or surrounded by these giant beautiful old redwood trees that are– you look up and they’re just massive towers in a matter of like six miles or less. It’s just the variety is absolutely insane. It’s a really, really awesome place to live.

JESSE FUNK: So, explain to me kind of, it seems like you’ve migrated across the country because you were– you grew up in, was it in Michigan, or where…?

JESSE FRANK: I grew up in Michigan. So, for those of you watching on the YouTubes, I’m going to do the quintessential Michigan thing where I’m going to pull out my hand because Michigan is shaped like a mitten or a hand. And I’m going to point to where I’m from, which is Metro Detroit, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills. It’s about 20 minutes from Detroit, 45 from Ann Arbor, and the University of Michigan. For those of you familiar with Eminem, the movie, Eight Mile, I grew up on 15 Mile Road. So, I’m like twice as hardcore as Eminem, or half depending on which way you look at it. Yeah, I lived there until I was just under 18 when I left for college, and I went to University of Colorado out in Boulder. Was there for seven years, collecting two degrees because I didn’t want to go to the real world, stayed on for a master’s degree.

And then I got the job out in California and now I’m here. I joke to my parents all the time like when are you going to move back home? And I just say I’m gonna keep moving west and eventually I’ll get home. I’m just gonna keep one way and I’ll circle back around. But Michigan was a great, great place to grow up but I’m very glad I don’t live there anymore.

As someone who’s pretty outdoor-oriented and loves to be outside and exercise outside, the part of Michigan where I grew up is pretty urban flat. Now you go north into the tip of the Lower Peninsula or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it’s super pretty, super cold; feel like skiing, snowmobiling, and ice climbing. It’s an awesome place. So, maybe I’ll move back there one day, but for now, California, Colorado, the West have my heart.

JESSE FUNK: I don’t know off the top of my head, but I would assume that Specialized has international offices, right?

JESSE FRANK: Yes. So, that’s one of my favorite parts about being at Specialized. Or A, we have an office in Boulder, and my boss actually works in Boulder. So, I got to go back to Boulder to connect with him and work on some projects every two to three months in normal times. And so since I started college in 2010, this is the longest period of time that I haven’t been in Boulder. It’s been almost seven months, I think. So, I go back all the time. My sister lives in Denver.

I have a bunch of college friends out there still like Dan and Melissa who were guests previously on the podcast. And it gets to the point in Colorado where I go visit and I send out text messages, it’d like anybody want to grab a beer tonight or have dinner? My friend’s like, “Ah, we’re busy tonight. We’ll see you the next time you’re in town.” “Thanks, guys.”

But yeah, we Specialized has offices all over the world. We have an office in the Netherlands that’s our like CE, Central Europe. I actually don’t know what that stands for. Office in the Netherlands there’s the tire team is in Germany, our ebike turbo team’s in Switzerland. We’ve got, our triathlon marketing people are in South Africa, Stellenbosch. And then small business units throughout the world that deal with the retailers all throughout.

And as someone who A, gets to travel for work to work with our pro teams, it’s really cool to travel abroad and still feel like you’re welcome right away and have a family there. And also someone who travels for races, it’s been really awesome for me.

I did both 70.3 Worlds in South Africa in Port Elizabeth, as well as in [??? 30:05] last year. And both times I’ve basically been able to stay in those countries for extended periods of time and hang out with Specialized employees, they’ve provided me accommodation, you know, their extra flat or on their couches or whatever. And then, this past December, I got to go to Spain to work with Quickstep in [??? 30:27] and ended up just going to Portugal for a couple days. Just because I was out there and wanted to enjoy it and find out the last minute we had like a three-person office in Portugal.

I got in touch with one of the employees there. He comped me an entry to a 10K the day I landed and I raised the 10K. He hung out with me. It was awesome. It’s a really awesome family.

JESSE FUNK: It’s almost kind of like– I was gonna say like it’s nice the way that something so I’ll say mundane, but just like something so ordinary as like running or cycling, kind of brings people together. I could be wrong but I’m not quite sure there’s the same kind of, maybe for the guys and girls that really like to lift. But if you go to the gym and lift weights, I don’t feel like if you show up somewhere else, you’re like, yeah, you workout at the gym sometimes. Like that’s not the same kind of comrade like, yeah, that’s cool. Like, let’s do it. Let’s go do some curls.

JESSE FRANK: Yeah, I almost feel like it revolves around having some kind of competition or like greater goal. You know, for triathletes, the cyclists, and runners, you have your different races or your different fun runs, or 5K’s. For people who like to lift CrossFitters, you have CrossFit Games, or Spartan races, you have that stuff. And it’s like you build family and community at those events. Or at least for me personally, that’s how I’ve formed a lot of really awesome friendships, especially through the collegiate triathlon scene.

I was on the [??? 31:58] for seven years and some of my best friends from college went to University of Arizona, went to Colorado State; other schools within our tri conference that we would see five, six times a year at races and hang out with after every race and you go to nationals and you all come together because you’re trying to be the best conference, and yes, it’s really special. It’s a special group of people. For as much as I like to make fun of triathletes sometimes because we are an odd, quirky group of people, it is an awesome community.

JESSE FUNK: Well, yeah. I mean, you’re taking on quirky people to start with in the single disciplines and then you’re finding the individuals that want to do all of them. So, I feel like that you’re getting down to a niche that it’s, you can’t help but just have kind of weird people, in a fun-loving way. I mean, obviously, I very much belong to that group, but just you’re gonna have some oddballs and that’s okay.

JESSE FRANK: Totally. Totally. Like I was saying earlier to you totally okay to walk around in spandex at Specialized headquarters. But as soon as I put on my proper running shorts with the split seams that are quite short, I get eight people poking their heads out the door who’s asking me where the rest of my shorts are and if I forgot them. So, I wear that badge with honor, I guess.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah. Well, I was thinking about that. I was kind of trolling your Twitter, and you were posting maybe a week ago about some guy yelling at– some big truck guy yelling at you in traffic.

JESSE FRANK: Oh, yeah. That was a week.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah. So, you know, I don’t feel like it’s so much anymore now that I’m kind of on trails and stuff. But definitely like growing up just in an area that we would be on the street running. We had people yell at us all the time. The most common, run Forrest run.

JESSE FRANK: Of course. I feel like you’re not a true runner if you haven’t heard that.

JESSE FUNK: I was like, okay, just get a new one. Like, give me something all the way to– There was a time when we were running from our high school basically, the streets that our high schools on all the way down to the dead end, a couple miles away on that same road and back. Coming back, my friend Ryan, he was kinda in the group of us, this car comes by, rolls her window down, lobs like 40-ounce orange soda at him [??? 34:32] really and it hits him in the leg…

And luckily, our coach was actually out there and he took his truck and forced the vehicle off the road to like see who it was. And it ended up being like another student at the school and then they’re getting suspended. So, it’s like once we get justice. But it’s like these things, unfortunately, aren’t uncommon. So, kind of what’s your– I think you were talking about on Twitter about you just trying to keep your cool with somebody like that. How do you approach it?

Is it easy to kind of lose your cool? I know I certainly have. Plenty of people have gotten the finger from me. Maybe not righteously but it’s happened, you lose your cool. How do you approach that situation?

JESSE FRANK: Yeah. And just to give some context to the listeners here, I was out on a long solo bike ride last Saturday. I was on my sparkly purple, Specialized venge wearing a full purple cycling kit. And I stopped at a light, the light had just turned green or was turning green. And at that time, a person in of course a lifted pickup truck, decided it would be a good time to roll down his window and yell at me, “You look like a homo.” And I didn’t really have time to process or think because I was already starting to pedal and like move away from the intersection.

I didn’t quite realize he was talking to me at first, but I looked back and saw he was looking at me. And all like, just in that moment, all I could think to say was just thanks’. ‘Cause like, really why is that an insult, right? Some of my most favorite people, the coolest, nicest, raddest people I know are gay. Like, that’s not an insult to me. Like, it’s a compliment. It’s like, “Oh, thank you. You’re calling me a good person”, essentially. Like clearly that person is not– And this is all stuff I thought about throughout the rest of my long run as I was processing–

JESSE FUNK: Right [??? 36:39] this conversation in your head.

JESSE FRANK: Yeah, ‘cause at first I was like really angry and thought of all the things I wanted to say about having small genitalia or you know, what have you. And so just kind of thinking through that and then like an hour later, I come upon another section of road with some graffiti spray-painted on the road and I knew there are a couple of adverse attempts going on in the area. So, turned around to see if it was graffiti for that and it ended up being the SS lightning bolts from like the far right white supremacy, white power group and it just said like, Zack and I think it said Zach and Sarah.

Two names, guy and girl and it said white and proud. And as a Jewish person that was concerning to me, [??? 37:21] was a Nazi group and what’s going on right now and Minneapolis and what we’re seeing throughout the country with racism and all the stuff that’s going on, it’s just– it’s so confusing for 2020. And I tend to be a pretty easygoing person and like to find the good in people and I like to joke a lot.

I put up a [??? 37:47] joke every week in the office, and right now I’m putting it up on Slack and I’m always making jokes, always trying to get people to laugh. And I tend to divert to humor in serious times. So, for me, it’s not necessarily hard to keep cool in that situation. I’m like I just kind of shrug it off, whenever like, if people don’t care, but it’s just so hard these days. I don’t really know how to process it to go forward and how to start speaking out against it because I think it’s important.

The time has come, the time has passed for people to start speaking out about it. And as a straight white cisgender male, it’s like I’m on like, the lowest pedestal of like– I feel like what my experience is and what I can speak. So, all I can do is try and give support to those people who are truly affected by getting called you look like a home or seeing like the white power stuff.

Because, I mean, like I said, I’m at the lowest end of that pedestal, but I have plenty of friends that is their life and it’s It breaks my heart to have to see them go through that on a daily basis. So, I try to offer support and figure out ways to help people out.

JESSE FUNK: You know, I wonder, and I wish I could remember which guest because I know it was a previous guest on the podcast, and maybe it’ll come to me. We talked about at the time, I think it was one of the guys on the show, talked about at the time basically how social media has traumatized us in a way. And I think about that in combination with how much like an echo chamber can be.

You know, where it’s like people who want to be Nazis now it’s like, okay, so if you’re listening to this and you’re a Nazi don’t ever buy anything from me like we’re not compatible. But just like I don’t need your business. You know, I try not to take like too political a stance, but that one, I’m pretty positive about.

JESSE FRANK: That’s not like a political stance, that’s just like are you a good person?

JESSE FUNK: Right. Like I’m pretty okay with Nazis not buying from me. But it’s like, so say you’re a young Nazi, and you live in a town with no other Nazis, like you’ll probably go out of it because people are gonna tell you that’s stupid. But then now we have this ability for people with these, I’ll say dumb ideas to come together and kind of like support each other in this like insane ideology.

So, it’s like social media is good in the one hand that we can kind of stay connected and share things like the podcast or it’s like I get to talk to you and by way, other people will get to listen to what you have to say about the stuff at Specialized which like you don’t have time or the wherewithal to have a conversation with every single person that wants to know about stuff is at Specialized, but at the same time we get terrible byproducts too.

JESSE FRANK: For sure. Have you heard of the comedian Bill Burr?

JESSE FUNK: Oh, sure. Yeah, I listened to him on the Morning Podcast and I’m a big Bill Burr fan.

JESSE FRANK: He has an old bit about shame and like why is shame bad. Have you heard that?

JESSE FUNK: I think so. It’s been a little while.

JESSE FRANK: For his joke, he was targeting like, body shaming or fat shaming is– [crosstalk]

JESSE FUNK: Oh yeah, yeah, yes.

JESSE FRANK: Like shame can be good. I’m not saying we should go out and body shame people, I think that’s wrong. But shame like sometimes can be– Like that’s what Twitter is sometimes. Like you shame people, oh this person’s racist let’s shame ‘em, you know, that’s going on with the George Flynn who the cop was that you know, kneed on George and ended up killing him, right.

It’s like, post a picture of him, post a picture of his record, and shame the world, shame the police into arresting and shame the people [??? 41:36] doing this. It’s almost like shame people into becoming better. It’s an interesting take, I guess.

JESSE FUNK: Well, it’s like, I think in Bill Burr’s bit if I’m remembering it, right, he’s talking about like you should be ashamed because it’s not healthy for you or that’s the gist. But it’s like shame is this method of control basically, right? Where we’re saying when we want to shame somebody, we’re saying in the society, that’s not okay. So, I think maybe that’s the argument is like, is with fat shaming. It’s like, I think– I’ve never been overweight, so it’s hard.

I can’t speak from experience. So, I’m just– it’s complete conjecture here on my part. So, take this with a grain of salt. But I feel like anybody that’s fat, at least that I’ve spoken to, that I was having a conversation with, they’re not unaware of it being unhealthy.

It’s not like they’re oblivious to this. It’s not like they don’t know. So, I think the conversation around that and fat-shaming is basically like, let’s dial it back a little bit because they already feel bad. And then some of the coping mechanisms they have basically helped make them more fun. So, let’s dial it back a little bit and help them, love on them a little bit instead of shaming them.

But then the argument basically that Bill Burr’s really against is it going too far in the other direction instead of saying, okay, it’s bad going to the point of saying, no, it’s perfectly healthy. It’s fine. It’s good. The pendulum swings back a little bit.

JESSE FRANK: For sure. It’s gonna be a happy medium somewhere.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah, yeah. So, I just– we’re on a tantrum about shame. But it’s just interesting, like social dynamics and stuff. So, one of my undergrad majors in psychology, so I’m interested in people. Math and psychology. I don’t know what I was thinking. Actually, I wanted to play poker is what I was thinking. And those are the things I was interested in.



But yeah, so I’ve got kind of an interesting brain. So, I did want to ask you, a little hard transition here. I did want to ask about– Let’s get back on the rails. I think I saw something about you working on the ebikes with the wind tunnel and stuff. Is that right?

JESSE FRANK: Yeah, so my role at Specialized, I’m not assigned to one product group. So, you have some engineers that work just on mountain bikes, some engineers that work just on road bikes, some engineers that were just on helmets, shoes, etc. The team I’m a part of the greater team, I’m a part of, the best way I can think to explain it is kind of like we’re internal contractors.

So, we all work with Specialized, we’re employed by Specialized, but we get loaned out to different teams, okay, depending on where the needs are. And so I’ll work on projects with the road bike team, some with the helmets and some with the shoes and I got to have my hands in a little bit of everything pretty much, which is really awesome for the triathlete in me who wants to be mediocre at a bunch of things, I guess.

It’s really nice to have my hands in a lot of things. And especially since the wind tunnel is a tool for all of our products. Sometimes we’ll have the ebikes in, sometimes we’ll have the road bikes in and sometimes, we’ll have shoes in. And so my job is a lot of research and development and doing initial testing and kind of guiding the engineers and guiding the product teams towards the direction they should go depending on what the project goal is, and then have them run off and make the final design changes. So, I can’t say I really have too much of an effect on what our ebikes look like or what the specs the ebikes are, but I get to do some of the earlier frame testing every now and again.

JESSE FUNK: Okay. Again, before we got like really derailed which is probably my fault. I wanted to ask about the dimples we used to see on helmets and stuff and this is just a personal curiosity. What happened to the dimples because I knew for a while it’s like all about like, it’s just like a golf ball and it’s gonna go, it’s really aerodynamic; why did we switch from that back to like, smooth surface helmets?

JESSE FRANK: I don’t know the actual exact reason in terms of helmets. I would– [crosstalk]

JESSE FUNK: [??? 46:05] a few frames, but it wasn’t a time.

JESSE FRANK: Yeah, I think part of it is an issue with aerodynamics. You only start off knowing so little, so much about a topic. And that’s what we knew. And as frame materials and just materials evolve, and we learn more, and by we, I mean, the industry learned more about aerodynamics; there was a lot more that the engineers could do with frame shapes. And so they actually shape the frames to be more aerodynamic. So, instead of it being a truncated airfoil, it’s a D shape that’s actually made for aerodynamics. Yeah. So, we can kind of get those same benefits and more without the dimples.

So, that would be my best guess as to why that happened. I can’t say for sure. But if you look at skinsuits these days, you’re going to see longer sleeves and or dimples. And that’s actually something I’ve done a lot of work with in the tunnel is skinsuits. Going back to that golf ball principle, the golf ball has dimples because essentially it helps the air have enough energy to get all the way around the golf ball; it [??? 47:05] that pressure…, so it can fly farther and faster through the air. If you think about a cyclist arm, we’re typically pretty skinny folk, we have pretty cylindrical-shaped arms.

And cylinders tend to be one of the worst shapes aerodynamically. And so air doesn’t have a lot of energy to actually get around our arms, kind of like it wouldn’t have enough energy to go around a golf ball. And so what we can do is depending on the speed the suit is targeted for, the athlete’s going to go. So, we can include different fabric textures, for different speeds.

And so we will basically do testing, we’ll get a bunch of fabric samples in and say all right, what fabric roughness is going to be the best for a suit for our sprinters that need to go 50 to 60K an hour. And what about 40 to 50 and then 30 to 40K an hour. And we can pick different materials that we can include on different skinsuits for those different speed ranges, so you can kind of fine-tune the skin suits.

JESSE FUNK: Okay. You mentioned earlier working on not just the aerodynamics of things but the thermodynamics of things. I wonder, [??? 48:17] have an issue with like overheating with different materials. So, how much of that is a concern now when you’re trying to develop the skin suits since obviously you could be, not saying that this is accurate, but just saying, for whatever reason, if you dip the rider in paint, that was the most aerodynamic thing we could do, well, that wouldn’t be very good because then they wouldn’t be able to breathe or get rid of the heat and then they would overheat and not be able to perform. So, aside from my absurd example, how much does that play a factor into kind of balancing the two objectives of being aerodynamic, but also dealing with the rider’s body.

JESSE FRANK: It’s becoming more of an objective. We’re pretty heavily focused on aerodynamics. I think most of the cycling industry was. But it’s actually a project we’re really focusing on now, especially since we can do a lot of theoretical work at home, in these times, and getting a better understanding of the thermal balance for a rider while they’re riding. And how clothes affect that and how we can affect that with some products. If you think about a sleeping bag or a sleeping pad, when you go camping, I’m assuming you like to go camping, here. But– [crosstalk]

JESSE FUNK: [??? 49:33] camping, yep.

JESSE FRANK: Good. Some sleeping bags are rated for different temperatures, as well as some sleeping pads that have what’s called an R-value or a co value that determines how well it insulates. And so we actually have a tool at Specialized that we can measure that same value for the clothes we use. And so we can use that to pick clothing that’s going to keep you warm in cold weather. But we’re also going to use that to figure out what is going to be a more breathable material. We can look at the color of a jersey or skinsuit and see what colors are reflected and absorbed and see how that can potentially affect thermoregulation there.

It also has to do with the fabric itself and how well it can transport water and evaporate that water, and evaporate the sweat to help you cool if you’re in a dry environment. So, there’s a bunch of these smaller pieces of the puzzle for apparel that we’re starting to learn more about. And we’re trying to improve for you know, the next iteration of products. So, that’s a really, really exciting project that I’m a part of now that we’re kind of at the start of currently.

JESSE FUNK: It’s good to hear that something’s working on it because I felt like several years back when I was having such issues, overheating in the suit that I had. And I’ve got a better suit now that’s developed, it’s got kind of a mesh back and even the new one I have now since I crashed and tore the other one that’s got the dimples on the shoulder and the longer sleeves obviously, I have the triathlon [??? 50:58]. And we have our own kind of needs because we both have to be hydrodynamic and aerodynamic, which is a very complicated situation to try to solve with clothing. Yeah. And then you gotta have it moisture wicked, but then it’s an absolute mess. Which is why you’d like swim skins and stuff to go over your suit if you can afford them or whatever.

JESSE FRANK: Yeah, generally things that are fast in the air and on the bike are gonna be super slow in the water and vice versa.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah. And vice versa because yeah, the thing about wetsuits, I mean, wetsuits’ gonna be faster than water, but I guess, although speaking of Jesse Thomas, I think at Santa Cruz one year he wore a wetsuit on the bike because it was so cold. Maybe it wasn’t Santa Cruz, but I’m pretty sure he wore one.

JESSE FRANK: So, Matty Reed and Callum Millward in Boise– [crosstalk] I think it was 2013, maybe 2016. But they both wore their wetsuits. Oh, was it– I know it was Matty Reed. Matty and Callum both tied in that race. Maybe that was the same race with the wetsuit that they wore, but like the race in Boise was shortened to like 30 something miles, it was super cold [??? 52:08] just wore their wetsuit.

JESSE FUNK: I was thinking was Jesse for some reason I think maybe I was like, following both of Matty Reed and Jesse Thomas at the time. [crosstalk]

JESSE FRANK: Jesse could have. I mean, you very well could be right. But I know for sure Matty Reed did it in Boise.

JESSE FUNK: It sounds more correct, as you’re saying it. So, I’ll probably like, I have no connection to Jesse. But if I ever talked to him, I’ll probably ask him like, did this happen? And he’ll be like no, that didn’t happen. It wasn’t me.

JESSE FRANK: You know, it’s a bummer. We didn’t have this conversation early January, as I presented at the Endurance Exchange Conference in Arizona, in Tempe with USAT. And my presentation was literally directly after Jesse Thomas spoke. And I was like, well, this is great. Not only am I like the less fast Jesse, I’m a less attractive Jesse. He’s got a picture of himself and like a speedo on there. I can’t put that type of content in mine. And so we got to chatting a little bit after we gave our presentation, so that was nice to meet him finally as a fellow Jesse. I’ve been wanting to meet him for a while. Super nice guy, but I would have gladly asked him about that.

JESSE FUNK: Well see, I always felt a little twinge of jealousy. So, I was trying to become a pro triathlete for a number of years, seven or eight years. I need to figure out exactly. And I always felt like okay, I was going to be a professional triathlete with a business. And not only can I not be a professional triathlete with a business, I wouldn’t be the first Jesse pro triathlete with a business. [??? 53:39] say what– [crosstalk]

JESSE FRANK: Why am I… Yeah.

JESSE FUNK: It was very, very tough. So, if anybody listening is not familiar with Jesse Thomas, he owns a nutrition company with his wife and I think they have a third business partner, Picky Bars. It’s like Whole Foods kind of bars. I used to eat a ton of them but I changed my snacks out pretty regularly. You can get them on subscription, all that kind of stuff. So, free [??? 54:06] for Jesse ‘cause they are good.

JESSE FRANK: They are good and shout out to Jesse Thomas. Congratulations on retirement. He had recently just retired from professional triathlon to focus on Picky Bar so good for him. Very, very exciting.

JESSE FUNK: Honestly, I don’t know how he did it to begin with like just [crosstalk] the time commitments are nuts.

JESSE FRANK: Plus having two kids.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah.

JESSE FRANK: What? How? Yeah. Impressive guy. [??? 54:33], obviously the most impressive Jesse of this trio, for sure.

JESSE FUNK: I think that’s two votes to maybe one against, maybe he would vote for himself. I don’t know.

JESSE FRANK: I don’t know.

JESSE FUNK: As we’re starting to run short on time, at least for you. So, since you watched Dan and Melissa’s episode, you know my question I’m going to ask, I would think. I’m asking everybody this year, what do you think the purpose of sport is?

JESSE FRANK: You know, I knew you’re gonna ask you this and I tried to think about it. And I was, I can’t come up with a good succinct answer. But I’ll start off by saying, I think sport can be different for everyone. It can have a different purpose for everyone. For some people, it’s their meditation. For some people, they solve all of their life problems on it, for some people, it’s the community. And it can be, I think, it even changes for me on a daily basis.

You know, we were talking earlier about how awesome the endurance community is especially in terms of travel, and you can go meet someone and feel right at home. And I think for me, sports has given me an incredible sense of community. with just the people I’ve met, the opportunities I’ve been given through that community has been really, really awesome and it’s turned into a social thing for me. A lot of the time, don’t get me wrong, I love riding my bike [??? 55:52] to run but I like doing it more with other people. I like sharing that experience with people.

Getting to ride down how I want, I look to my left, and go, holy crap and turn to my buddy and be like, are you seeing this? Like how lucky are we? How privileged are we, that we get the ability to do this in our free time? And so that’s really special. But as COVID’s been happening, that sense of community has kind of been taken away. And now it’s just kind of giving me like, a connection to outside, which it always has, but it’s kind of being elevated in the current times. And I try not to listen to music or podcast too much when I’m actually outside on the road riding. I like to hear the [??? 56:36], I like to hear the birds chirping, hear other people. And it’s just been really nice to kind of back away from trying to go hard all the time and just being out there to be out there.

I went on my first bike packing trip last weekend. I did an overnighter in Santa Cruz just off the side of Highway One and it’s just so nice just to feel the wind on my face and just be outside and smile and see people with joy on their face riding a bike or running or hiking with their family. So, I don’t know, I don’t want to be cliche and say it gives me a sense of feeling alive. But it really can sometimes. It’s the sense of being alive and the sense of community, I think are the two biggest things for me with sports.

JESSE FUNK: I mean, there’s something there, right, where it’s like you can go outside just about any time, I mean even right now you can go outside. But I think, and I’m a big proponent of don’t listening to music, don’t do this. Like, if you listen to this podcast while you’re working out, I guess, thank you, but maybe, also– [crosstalk]

JESSE FRANK: If you are, go harder, you’re not done with your interval yet. Suck it up.

JESSE FUNK: Something like that. But it’s like just going out– not to be too hippyish, but it’s just like, it’s your time to kind of commune with nature and spend time with yourself inside your own head and kind of decompress, so to speak. We all have, especially in the US, very busy lives. Always something go on. There’s always entertainment to watch.

There’s always something. It’s information overload, which is something I’ll probably talk about with my next guest. So, if you’re watching this, stay tuned to that one. But it is one of the definite, like internal aspects of sport that I think we forget to connect to sometimes it’s so important beyond the competition, beyond the new PR, beyond am I in shape is like, am I connected to myself and the world around me? Instead of being just super busy, jarred, brain’s fuzzy all the time.

JESSE FRANK: Absolutely. And if it helps you listen to music to help you find yourself while you’re riding, so be it. I’m not gonna tell you not to, but for me personally, it’s not my cup of gem most of the time. I was actually listening to a podcast last night while cooking dinner with Gus Morton, a former professional cyclist and former specialized like gravel team rider. He was interviewing [??? 59:09]. I always butcher his last name. I don’t know how to say it. Sorry…Tony. He’s an ultra runner…a bunch of times now just does a bunch of big bike packing stuff and other missions as he’s rehabbing some injuries. But he was saying, he loves going fast, but he also loves just enjoying being in nature.

And he does trail runs all the time. And people are like, why don’t you just slow down and the smell of roses? And his response to that is, well, that’s a much different experience than me running as fast as I can jumping over the boulders. Like, I want to experience nature this way right now. I can appreciate stopping and smelling the roses, but for me right now, that’s not how I want to do it. So, I thought that was a really poignant way of saying that; how it can be so different for everyone, but also so different for one person on a day to day basis.

JESSE FUNK: Yeah, yeah. All right, Jesse. So, we know you’ve got Twitter. Twitter, obviously. Where can people find you if they want to kind of keep up with your antics? What’s going on in the wind tunnel, what’s going on with Specialized, all those kinds of things?

JESSE FRANK: You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at JFrank32. Those are the two main places. I don’t have a TikTok. I’ve got enough distractions. I just have my sister send me all the best of TikTok’s and I get the other stuff on Twitter through TikTok. Yeah, those are the two best ways I’d say.

JESSE FUNK: Sounds good, man. Hey, thanks for hanging out with me today.

JESSE FRANK: Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.

JESSE FUNK: Take care.

JESSE FRANK: You too.