The Eye Of The Beholder

The old adage is undeniably true regarding beauty and the eye of the beholder.  The visual appearance of fellow humans, animals, inanimate objects and everything that we encounter can only be viewed with our own eyes and processed with our own brains.  For this reason it's hard not to laugh at the perpetually inane Pinkbike comment fights that go along the lines of *;

'Oh man that bike is ugly'
'Have you seen your face?!'
'Ugly and expensive... Who the H would pay $5500 canadian for a hardtail?'
'Looks like it'd be a laugh to ride which is what it's all about isn't it?'

*These are excerpts from an actual exchange http://www.pinkbike.com/news/2017-btr-ranger-amp-build-options.html

Now whilst this banter is a touch childish it's really just people spouting their personal opinions on what is essentially a subjective matter.  These aren't arguments that anyone has any possibility or even intention of winning, just bored people having verbal swings at eachother about something that is inherently pretty irrelevant and non-offensive.  And the thread continued in this vein until it strayed on to slightly different territory and at that point my laughter ceased...

The bike that sparked the lively debate.  To me it's ugly as sin, to others it's beautiful but until you look at the welds then don't comment on the quality!

'very Fast and capable bikes, UK hand made to custom spec. Not some Taiwanese off the self labeled up as high quality custom crap'
(misplaced capitals copied from original comment)

Now I'm sure that there were no connotations of racism in the comment and people do seem to enjoy vehemently defending the UK manufacturing industry.  For that I have to commend them but I do take issue with the insinuation that companies are duping customers with sub-standard Taiwanese frames being sold as custom items.  Why does an off-the-shelf  Taiwanese frame have to be viewed as inferior to an off-the-shelf UK produced frame?  For so many years there has been an unjustifiably elevated status afforded to anything manufactured in the UK or the USA within the bike industry.

Times have changed and 'made in Taiwan' is no longer as indicative of poor workmanship as it was undoubtedly considered twenty years ago.  Perceptions do advance, in the same way that I'm sure kids whose parents own a Skoda no longer see it as the badge of playground shame it was when I was growing up.  The fact is that some of the finest craftsmanship in bike frames is now coming out of Taiwan and the quality of the end product is all down to how much time and monetary investment companies are prepared to invest in finding the best factories to produce their wares.  If you want to have a simple comparative check of relative standards between companies then you have to look at the finer details closely.  And so that's what I decided to do.

I've currently got four steel hardtail frames in my garage, two decidedly retro and two very modern.  I thought I'd take a look at the same part of each frame and attempt to spot noticeable quality differences between them in terms of workmanship.  Specifically I was visually inspecting the welds and assessing the key factors that signify good welding.

1) No porosity, cracks or craters
2) Uniform bead ripples (or fishscales)
3) Even bead profile (same thickness, even toe lengths) 

Although in itself this is subjective I do have a fairly trained eye for equipment inspection (as it forms part of my job).

Frame 1

The cheapest frame at £250 in 1998 (inflation adjusted approx £425).  Welded in Taiwan for a US based bike company.  Clear lack of uniformity and excess material particularly around the top of the seatstay to seat tube joint.  Uneven bead ripples and bead profile.

Frame 2

Priced at £549 in 2017.  Produced in Taiwan for a UK based company.  Weld standard is fairly high, small and neat although some variation in bead size and also in profile on the top tube gusset.

Frame 3

Priced at £599 in 2017.  Produced in Taiwan for a UK based company.  Weld quality extremely high with near perfect uniformity of bead size and profile throughout.


Frame 4

Priced at £770 in 1997 (inflation adjusted approx £1310).  Welded in the US for a US based company. High standard of welding.  Small and neat with good bead uniformity and just small variations in bead profile.

So what did I learn?

As mentioned before, clearly this is subjective and although I can weld I'm not claiming to be an expert.  However here are four different frames and obviously differing degrees of visual quality.  Generally the standard of the welding improves with cost with the worst work evident on the £250 (£425) frame.  Next up is the £549 frame which is a clear step up in quality but still shows some variation in bead size and profile.  Second best with some very neat welds but some profile variation is the £770 (£1310) frame and the best is the £599 offering.

Now undoubtedly frame build is only one of several aspects that impact on overall cost and ride quality.  Tubing type, R&D, economies of scale and volumes produced, marketing, paint costs, labour costs, shipping and no doubt other factors come into play but then surely the point of having production in the East is to counteract some of these issues to hit a more palatable price point without compromising quality.

Two points have become apparent to me from this exercise;

1) Frames made in Taiwan can definitely be built to an extremely high standard and the right 'off-the-shelf' Taiwanese frame can display better qualities than a boutique US made one costing over twice as much.

2) That contrary to several moaning comments I've read lately, steel frames aren't exponentially increasing in price along with their recent resurgence in popularity.  The fact is that top quality steel frames have always been expensive, particularly from the really desirable brands.  The likes of Bontrager, Voodoo and Dekerf were happily banging out frames in the nineties that would cost way over a grand now with inflation adjustments.

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder and whilst others would certainly disagree I personally always viewed the white frame as a workhorse and the black frame as a touch ugly.  The orange one is a work of art with some lovely touches and the green one looks incredible.

Quality however is in the trained eye of experts and there is a definite variation in standards on show.  Unsurprisingly the workmanship generally improves with increasing price but not necessarily and it's very clear that a mass produced Taiwanese frame in 2017 can easily hold its own against UK or US produced offerings.  I'm definitely all for buying local as long as it makes sense in terms of price and quality but I'm definitely not a believer in compromising my ride experience just to support our manufacturing industry or in slagging companies because of the origin of their equipment.

The Finished Article

I was watching the football recently and drifting off as tedious commentators reeled out a barrage of cliches to fill in the gaps of a lacklustre nil-nil draw.  Their observations were largely washing over me until one of them used the well worn line;

'well he's not quite the finished article yet' 

And that set me thinking, what the hell does the finished article look like?

I've been training for about 29 years now, initially for football, then tennis before, at the age of fourteen making some serious, if misguided forays into physical conditioning for cross country mountain biking.  Even during the booze laden university years I continued to push hard on the bike and occasionally jogged through the picturesque suburbs of darkest Swansea.  Since then I kept fit for a decade before finding mountain running and seriously ramping up the commitment and intensity in order to compete at my current level.

As well as training harder I've also become a lot more clued up on the other essential aspects of diet, mindset and running technique and searched hard to find those marginal gains that may keep my ageing body ahead of my rivals.  To maintain this degree of focus takes a dedication and mental fortitude which is always motivated by that search to become better.  But where does it ever stop?

I always thought that the onset of my thirties would signal the beginning of a decline with metabolism slowing and fat appearing in previously toned areas but in actuality the opposite occurred with the discovery of a new sport where malnutrition (or at least minimal non-essential calorific intake) is par for the course among top competitors.  As I approach the exit to that decade the scales are informing me that my default weight is now a stone lighter than ten years ago.

So I'm lighter, fitter, better technically and faster than I used to be but only the totally deluded would consider me anywhere near a finished article.

2015 Mourne Skyline Skyrunner win.  Certainly one of my better days but I still could've gone faster and subsequently have so no finished article there!  Photo Credit: Jayne Bell

So what about true masters, Pele, Beethoven, Kasparov, were they the finished article?  Certainly at a point in time they could all have been considered the pinnacle of human achievement within their extremely narrow fields but to consider they were incapable of further improvement would have been insultingly misguided.

So if true legends, the all time top proponents weren't the hallowed finished article then can it be achievable?

Well, yes possibly it can but you need a high degree of specificity and very clear goals.  To narrow the field and have stated aims at least allows you to be the finished article at one point in time and one very specific achievement.  For example, I hold a couple of record times which I specifically aimed to set whilst racing.  By beating a target set by myself but also all previous competitors I can convince myself that on that day and at achieving that aim I was indeed the finished article.  But it doesn't mean that others can't be infinitely better.  You can only be your own finished article.

I'm not foolish enough to believe I'll ever be the World mountain running champion. That particular boat probably sailed years before I even discovered the sport.  However, at some point I will be my finished article within mountain running, the best me I can ever be.  It may have already happened, my best ever performance where it all felt effortless and flowing may be behind me, I'll find out too late, when the times do get slower despite the effort remaining constant.  A facet of always believing you can get better is the fact that ultimately you'll be wrong, barring a premature retirement or untimely death you will start to naturally deteriorate.

Which could be a pretty depressing thought....

Except it's not at all because you can always be improving at something, working towards being your finished article all over again in a totally different field.

I've been unable to run for twelve weeks now due to injury but have been given a reprieve from mental torture by my incredibly generous physio who lent me his cyclocross bike.  Instantly I set about a new training regime of high intensity turbo training, 'ugly fifteens' and two wheeled drifts round grassy corners on a bike that's definitely not the best designed tool for that kind of behaviour. The learning curve has been seriously rapid and massively enjoyable.  It's so bizarre taking a pastime that is seemingly so close to my comfort zone (as a mountain bike coach) but actually in many ways is miles away.

So a few weeks ago I sped around a local trail centre feeling far too upright with bars too narrow and brakes that barely functioned.  The 80psi in my tyres to ward off pinch flats gave my hands a beating that'd reduce a jackhammer operator to tears.  Initially I tensed up, slid, over braked and did all the things I coach out of beginners on mountain bikes, but pretty rapidly I found the boundaries and started launching the drops and letting it go on the corners before inevitably the front tyre did blow out on one less than finessed landing.

Armed with a decent level of fitness and a very small modicum of specific CX ability I than set about taking on my first race.  Like an idiot I was conned into doing the 'A' class before seeing that the majority of rank amateurs go into the 'B'.  The great thing is that I didn't care!  Obviously I tried to bury myself physically but found that I actually struggled to burn myself out because my lack of skills on the endless sharp bends gave me too much time to recover!  Not being 'gridded' and starting at the back denied me the chance to have a brief flirtation with the quick lads at the front but really it was a lack of technical ability that saw me forced back into a respectable but unremarkable 19th place finish.  When it comes to cyclocross I'm currently so far from the finished article that I'm barely an article at all!

Cyclocross.  Just riding bikes around a field, how hard can that be?  Actually pretty damn challenging!

So the moral of the story for me is that far from being dismayed at the ultimately doomed search for unending improvement, maybe we should instead just focus on being our own finished article every time we compete.  Clear goals allow us the satisfaction of success whilst accepting that another, harder target is then required to motivate us to push on.  When finally we do succumb to the natural decline through age or injury then we can accept it and either keep competing at a lower level or really excitingly take up something new and work towards once again becoming our personal finished articles.  Cue a lifetime of new experiences!