Why this Toronto man ran so a giant stickman could dance

Colleagues would ask Duncan McCabe if he was training for a marathon, but, really, the 32-year-old accountant was committing multiple hours of his week, for 10 months, to stylistically run on the same few streets in Toronto's west end with absolutely no race in mind.

It was all for the sake of creating a seconds-long animation of a dancing stickman for Strava.

• Download our app to get alerts on your device

It is a phone app where athletes can track their running activity. Strava has been home to stylistic running art pieces before – the company has even highlighted some of its favourite Strava artworks – but McCabe wanted to go the extra mile and turn his routes into a 30-second cartoon to the tune of Sofi Tukker's "Purple Hat". After all, he already produced and edited videos for his YouTube channel as a hobby – why not try his hand at making a simple animation?

"I knew the video market wasn't tapped, so I thought, 'Let's just try merging my two worlds: running with a video,'" McCabe told CTV News Toronto in an interview on Tuesday.

About 120 runs later, McCabe's boogying, hat-twirling stick figure came to life – with his arms wiggling throughout Bloorcourt and Harbord villages, his legs dancing over Trinity Bellwoods Park.

The accountant said he used Toronto's grid-like street system to his advantage, using street names to mark where the stick figure's imaginary spine is, for example.

"If he walks, meaning he pretends to move his legs, I literally move which street represents his spine every single day, and he remains stable in the centre of the frame, but the map underneath him moves," McCabe said.

"I had to plan based around the beats of the Sofi Tukker song, when he was going to turn, when he was going to walk. I could see it coming into form, especially every day as I would drag and drop my screenshots into my final cut timeline, and so that was definitely 100 per cent the main motivator."

While McCabe had to constantly look at his phone to ensure he would stay on course to retain his stick figure's shape, he said he did catch the occasional inning of a minor-league baseball game at Christie Pits Park – that, and several cats.

"I got to see a lot of cats. I was recognizing cats, I was doing these routes so often," McCabe said.

'I didn't want to lose that run'

Rain or shine, McCabe channelled his inner David Goggins to stay motivated – he said even if it "seemed crazy," he had to keep going. McCabe pointed to one particular run when it rained heavily.

"I can't quit because I'm 80 per cent done my man, but I can't move from the spot because I don't want to screw up the line, and my finger is so wet that I can't pause or un-pause the smartphone," McCabe recounted.

"I'm just standing in a street corner, in shorts, torrential downpour, nowhere to get cover – I was on College somewhere – and just trying to press this button, and I felt so silly because, like, I don't know, it just seemed crazy – I had to finish it because I didn't want to lose that run."

For months, the only feedback McCabe said he would hear would be from his wife, giving him words of encouragement like, "That was a good stickman today, well done."

Even when McCabe initially posted his gyrating stick figure, he said he didn't get much public reaction – just a handful of likes for the first three days.

Then, he said he woke up on a Friday morning and saw the clip had been re-shared on X, formerly Twitter, and received millions of views.

Brian Bell, Strava's vice president of global communications and social impact, told CTV News Toronto via email that McCabe's planning and effort of completing 121 runs to create this cartoon is inspiring.

"At Strava, we're continually amazed by the creativity of our community. Strava Art is just one example of the amazing feats our users accomplish on the platform, and this particular in-motion animation is a whole new level of ingenuity that anyone can appreciate," Bell wrote.

McCabe called the amount of acknowledgement and support he has so far received, "unbelievable" and "overwhelming."

"So many people really get how much work goes into it, because, on first (glance) you might not think it, it just looks like an animation on the road, but when you're thinking about it, if it's five frames – like five stickmen per second – every second of content takes 50 or 60 kilometres of running. If I just want one second of content, I have to run more than a marathon per second," McCabe said.

Sofi Tukker even noticed his kilometres-long efforts, reacting to his video in a post on TikTok.

"@Strava what if we got all the runners together and made a music video from their routes … runners… u down?" the video's caption reads, begging the question if we can expect more Strava-fueled animations in the near future.