Ask Dr. Dumb: Should I Be Worried About My Vertical Oscillation?
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Readers, I don’t want to stress you out, but there is one more thing for runners to worry about. That thing is vertical oscillation, which I learned about recently thanks to an article on RunnersWorld.com.
That article covers a lot of territory, including:
So much oscillation!
To get to the bottom of this important topic, and then the top, and then the bottom again, I reached out to our go-to expert on bullet points and polysyllabic verbiage, Dr. Dumb.
Dumb Runner: Doctor, thank you for joining us.
Dr. Dumb: Thanks for having me.
So, let’s start with the basics. What is vertical oscillation?
It means bounce.
Why wouldn’t Runner’s World just say “bounce,” then?
Because more syllables means more Seriousness™. “Bounce” is just one syllable; “vertical oscillation” is seven. So, seven times more serious.
It could also be the middle line of a haiku!
Correct. As in,
we drown in metrics;
vertical oscillation
is just the latest
I’m going to guess that, for runners, a little bounce is good and too much is bad.
Yeah, which is sort of obvious, isn’t it? I don’t know how RW managed to stretch that out into an entire article. I don’t know, by the way, because after reading the first few paragraphs, my eyes glazed over.
That’s not your eyes, doctor. It’s the text itself. The article in question is “For Runner's World+ members only,” so they blur most of it for anyone who isn’t a paying member.
What! Don’t they have all sorts of ads and affiliate links and stuff to make money?
They do. Still, some of their content is behind this paywall.
Huh. Really makes you appreciate websites that generate 100% original content and then share it openly, with zero ads or paywalls or “cookies” or any of that crap, doesn’t it?
It really does. But back to vertical oscillation. Does the phrase make you think of the song “Oscillate Wildly,” by the Smiths?
Yes! It’s a great song.
Is it OK to enjoy that song, and the Smiths in general, given Morrissey’s history of ugly remarks on things like race and Islam?
That’s a question that every music fan must confront for themselves.
Is Morrissey a “massive wanker crybaby”?
According to one commenter on this article, yes.
So, to summarize: It sounds like we can add vertical oscillation to the long list of things that it’s safe for most runners to ignore—yet another metric that, while possibly interesting to a relative handful of data geeks, only adds to the already long list of distractions that combine to make an intrinsically simple activity needlessly complicated.
That is my expert opinion, yes.
One final question, doctor. Do you think it’s a safer bet for anyone uneasy about The Smiths to listen instead to The Cure?
Absolutely.
Thanks, Dr. Dumb. As always, your comments were so insightful. Why can’t I be you?
Buck up, my friend. Boys don’t cry.
