"It definitely gives me confidence," Frame says. "A lot of the guys in that race have a whole career [behind them]. They're in the back end of it and this is my first time at that level so just to be there or thereabouts is huge."
Frame put a relatively big gear on his bike in the hope of saving his legs and saving himself for a clear run at a sprint finish.
"I was wearing a sprinting helmet and no socks - half sprinter, half enduro."
While the sprinters have been gaining momentum and most of the headlines, Frame is one of a trio of young endurance track riders that BikeNZ has big plans for in the coming years.
Dylan Kennett, 17, and Hayden McCormick, 18, are also expected to chase major championship glory in the coming years.
Their time will come, for the moment it is Frame - nickname, the A-Frame - who is being rapidly exposed to the best in the business.
Frame immediately noticed the intensity of riding in the scratch, but he showed enough savvy to make out like he was poised to try to go with a break when in reality he had no intention of doing anybody else's work.
"The first half just felt like a mass sprint because someone was always kicking it. I was just sand-bagging every single surge and trying to say there till the end, but yeah, they're bloody strong, aye," he said of the senior riders.
The scratch is a non-Olympic discipline, which is why BikeNZ decided to blood him in that event. The only way you can learn to bunch ride on the track is to, well, bunch ride on the track.
They threw him the kilo time trial too, another non-Olympic discipline, but here Frame was brought back to the boards, figuratively, with a bump. With no serious pretensions of doing anything other than having a bit of a hit-out, Frame's 1m 04.794s put him way down the field, more than 4s slower than New Zealand's bronze medallist Simon van Velthooven.
The world champs have capped off a whirlwind past month for the wide-eyed Cantabrian.
"I went to Bendigo for 10 days for madison racing. After that I was meant to come back to NZ and shoot to Belgium, but then I got called into the elite camp in Invercargill. They gave me a trial and [then] wanted me to come here. They shot me to Perth for a week and I came back to Melbourne for a week.
"It's all madness... but it's been good," he said.
Frame learned on the roads of Christchurch, loving the freedom of riding around the bays.
In the innocence of youth, he even found things to appreciate post-February 22, 2011.
"That happened just before I went to Belgium. It prepared me for racing in Belgium... just jumping stuff and going through rocks and s***."
