Toronto runner goes viral for quirky Strava maps across the city: 'I didn't think it would have this reaction'
Duncan McCabe, who now lives in Ottawa, was featured on U.S. TV shows hosted by Kelly Clarkson and Stephen Colbert
Duncan McCabe never expected running through the streets of Toronto would land him on talk shows and inspire internet memes around the world. But that's exactly what happened after he posted intricate maps of his running routes, painstakingly tracked over the course of a year on the Strava app.
Videos of McCabe's dancing stickman animations have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times since November. The runner was even written about in The New York Times and invited onto the Kelly Clarkson show.
But when McCabe first posted it online, the quirky Strava art didn't get much traction until it was shared by some bigger accounts on social media.
“It was kinda devastating,” he tells Yahoo Canada. “You don’t know how people are going to react, no one’s ever done this before. You put in a year’s worth of effort and the only feedback I was getting at the time was my wife, who’d say ‘That's a good stickman today.’”
McCabe completed a total of 120 runs over a 10-month period in order to put his clip together, totalling more than 1,100 kilometres.
“Every second of animation requires one and a half marathons worth of effort,” he says. "It’s not a very effective way to make animation, but it’s the one I wanted to do.”
Strava art: Viral animation took 10 months, 120 runs to complete
Strava art is becoming increasingly popular among dedicated runners, with a whole section of the app’s website showcasing 3,000 submitted pieces — including drawings of music icons Elvis Presley and Freddie Mercury.
McCabe says a long, rectangular stickman was the most logical way to “draw” out a character, while taking advantage of the city’s grid. As he ran, his phone's GPS tracked his route to create the lines of his figure. So a strategic left turn here, or a right turn there could create the hat it wears. In order to make some of the figure’s angles, McCabe would need to pause the app to get to the right place, and then turn it back on again, with the app creating a line between the two points.
While he’s produced other animations featuring animals, it was his dancing stickman that really took off. The 27-second animated clip of his runs shows a stickman dancing, flipping his hat and strolling down the streets of Toronto.
McCabe, who's a chartered accountant, started animating his runs in 2023. He says having a creative goal to focus on through his workouts helped motivate him to run more.
“I’ve always been a runner,” he says. “When I started to add creativity to the run, that’s when I started to pick up the pace, to use a running term.”
Runner on viral fame: 'You don’t know how people are going to react'
“I’ve seen worse products go viral online so I knew it was always possible that it could take off,” he adds. “But I didn't think it would have this reaction. It was definitely better than my best case scenario.”
A turning point came after Toronto-based sports journalist Ben Steiner posted it to Twitter. Soon, McCabe’s art was being featured on Fox News and CBS. The New York Times did a profile and he Zoomed in to The Kelly Clarkson Show. Stephen Colbert even referenced him in a Late Show monologue, creating a mock-up animation.
However, McCabe says the biggest reaction came from meme communities, who would create new edits of the clip, featuring different music.
“A whole bunch of meme pages shared it, and I was finding my work all across the internet and being added and tagged and a whole bunch of comments,” he says.
Ottawa is new playground for runner's Strava art
Since going viral, McCabe has left Toronto for his hometown of Ottawa, where his family still lives. And he's hitting the ground running — literally — and experimenting with runs in more open spaces like parks and farms.
“Ottawa is different ... It’s not as downtown grid-y,” he says. “But it’s just a different canvas with different opportunities.”
“If you’re restricted to the roads, you’re restricted to the roads,” McCabe says. “But if you’re in a big open field and you want to be precise with the GPS movements, you can make some pretty precise stuff. It doesn’t need to be a stick figure.”
A whole bunch of meme pages shared it, and I was finding my work all across the internet.