‘I just ran a lot’: the Strava user whose runs became a viral art phenomenon

Paused on a busy Toronto street, eyes glued to a map on his phone, Duncan McCabe could easily be mistaken for a lost tourist. Within moments, however, he’s on the move again. “I think, at this point, we’re along the belly of the whale,” he says. “The fin is coming up soon.”

McCabe is midway through his latest work, using the outline of his running route as shown on the fitness app Strava to create a cartoonish whale.

The cetacean, spout and all, comes as he enjoys online fame from his previous work of running art, a dancing stick figure that has accrued nearly 100m views.

It all started for the 32-year-old accountant after he posted a 27-second video to TikTok. Virtually all art on Strava, the popular app used by athletes to record the details of their workouts, comprises a single, at times immensely detailed, frame.

McCabe’s contribution to the genre was in making something that moved – or in this case, danced.

The video, set to the beat of Purple Hat by Sofi Tukker, has the stick figure dancing and shuffling along the streets of Toronto’s West End – a feat that involved 1,100km of running. Every second of the video is a marathon and a half. The idea, which plays out like a flip book, came from his wife, Andrea Morales.

“I love working with video. And over the years I’ve come to appreciate that one of the most powerful and underused tools is the passage of time,” he said. “And motion is just time unfolding.”

The stick figure wasn’t McCabe’s first attempt at Strava art. Last year, he made a collection of blocky animals by running through the city’s streets. He admits they were amateurish, but served as a useful exercise in learning both the quirks of Strava and the level of fastidiousness needed to execute a grander vision.

Initially, the now-famous TikTok post went unnoticed, racking up dozens of views in the first few days.

“The reality is you have to go into these things assuming that they’ll fall flat, that they’ll fail.”

It was only after Ben Steiner, a Toronto-based sports journalist, reposted McCabe’s video that a broader audience took notice.

In the weeks since, he’s appeared on daytime talkshows, waded through a frenzy of media interviews and emerged with a level of virality that has exceeded anything he imagined would be possible. With that level of internet fame, he now occupies a rare space few creatives ever attain: a chance to build on success and to address the ever-lingering question of what comes next. The whale, run on a recent December morning before sunrise, is part of that answer.

Duncan McCabe plots a section of his run, the whale’s spout, that will form the latest element of his Strava art. Photograph: Leyland Cecco/The Guardian

Holding a detailed map on his phone in one hand and a 360-degree camera in another, he jogs up and down the quiet pre-dawn streets, past the clatter of road construction and at times, dodging incoming traffic.

“If I let Strava plan this route out for me, it would put me at crosswalks. That doesn’t work for something like a whale.”

Occasionally, he abruptly stops and begins walking, the secret for the most controversial element of his famed dancing stick figure: the diagonal lines.

It’s the question he’s asked most online: how did he pull off this impossible feat, in a city laid out on a grid, without cutting through yards or even through entire buildings? McCabe uses a quirk of Strava whereby if a user pauses the run, and then moves to another location, the program smooths out the route using a straight line.

But his explanation isn’t enough to satisfy a minority of armchair internet contrarians.

“They say that instead of running four times a week, I flew a drone, lied to my friends and family in the hopes that a novel idea takes off,” he said. “Because that’s oddly more satisfying than accepting I just ran a lot for a long time.”

Instead, he wishes viewers had noted the deliberate subtleties of the animation, including when the stick figure struts along the screen – a feat that required shifting the whole piece further and further away from his home.

When it came to assembling the video, McCabe had to fiddle with the smallest details, including dozens of stray lines and frame rates. The resulting art, in a way, comes in spite of – not because of – the programs used to create it.

Art and running both require propulsive internal force to complete. For McCabe, it was a vision in his head – of a dancing stick figure – he couldn’t shake. “It’s simple, I know it sounds silly, but I got goosebumps thinking about what it could be.”

There were days he was soaked through from torrential downpours. When he needed to access his phone to see the route, he realised wet fingers can’t operate a touch screen. “You find yourself praying you can find a bit of dry sock to maybe clear a bit of the screen,” he says. “Or else you just spent the last hour for nothing.”

For 10 months, he toiled alone. “I was doing this with no feedback. All I had was my wife. I’d come home and she’d ask how my stick man was, and I’d tell her: ‘Oh, tonight was a great stick man.’”

His online fame, however, has not brought him many tangible rewards.

“I thought brands would want to reach out and maybe want to be a part of this,” he said. “All I’ve got is a pair of shoes and a few protein bars.”

Even with all the miles logged, McCabe doesn’t think of himself as a runner. “I don’t have a fancy kit. I don’t go fast. If anything, running is just a way of making the art.”

The sun has risen, the streets are growing busier and McCabe is nearly done with the whale. He’s working through the lower pectoral fin. When he can, he edges towards patches of greenery.

“I like to avoid the sharp turns when I can. I love the lazy, meandering angles, especially on something like a whale. Not everyone will notice it. Most won’t,” he said. “But, I do.”