People are using Strava to create amazing street art

Strava, the fitness tracking app used by more than 120 million athletes around the world, is being used by a handful of hobbyists to create amazing works of art.

Canadian accountant Duncan McCabe is one of those choosing to do more than track how often he pounds the sidewalk on regular runs. McCabe is the creator of a viral video that has captured the attention of users on TikTok and X.

@duncan77mccabe

Strava art animation through the streets of Toronto! This took me 121 runs from January to October 2024. #strava #running #toronto #purplehat #active #run #Canada #motivation #madden25 #ncaa #purple #hat #sofitukker #sofi #tukker

♬ original sound – Duncan McCabe

McCabe’s record of runs, which took place between January and October, and when stitched together depict a stick man dancing to Sofi Tukker’s “Purple Hat,” is a labor of love. Every single frame of the video—the second he’s produced, after a &ab_channel=DuncanMcCabe">similar enterprise in 2023—involves McCabe running around 10 kilometers each day. 

“I knew if I wanted to have the fluidity that I wanted, it would need to have at least 120 frames,” he tells Fast Company. “If there were fewer frames, it would just look jittery.”

McCabe’s wife gave him the idea of producing this year’s running video last Christmas. It took days of work to plan out to ensure it worked well. “I was just conceptualizing it, listening to the song, and thinking about what I might do,” he says. McCabe used PowerPoint to draw the broad outlines of where the lines would have to be to show the stick figure dancing in the way he wanted—and enabled him to plan out his daily running routes to ensure that, when combined, the top-down maps would animate in a way that hit the beats of the song he sought to capture.

McCabe isn’t alone in “hacking” Strava to depict artwork or cartoons using the line drawings created as the app’s GPS tracking system follows them on their workout. There’s a vibrant community of athletes who have chosen to use their run and bike tracking tools to make fun pictures. “I’ve got good admiration for many of the good pieces of Strava art out there,” he says, highlighting Mike Scott, another Torontonian, who sketched out an image of a beaver using cycle routes in 2022. One of the most famous Strava artists is cyclist Nico Georgiou, who creates intricate pieces created by biking across London. San Francisco native Jakub Kuba Mosur uses his bike rides to draw out bold messages, including exhortations to vote.

McCabe has been a bit shocked by the reactions: TikTok has been enthralled, while many on X have cried BS, saying McCabe had run diagonally across Toronto’s strictly delineated blocks—a physical impossibility. What users on X haven’t realized is that it’s possible to pause and restart tracking on Strava, which allows him to draw the intricate diagrams he’s depicted. 

“The downside of that is any run that I go diagonally, I don’t get any credit for,” McCabe says. “So it might be a 12 kilometer run, but because I was pausing and unpausing for these corners, it only gives me credit for nine kilometers.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91234911/people-are-using-strava-to-create-amazing-street-art?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss

Created 4mo | Nov 22, 2024, 8:30:05 PM


Login to add comment

Other posts in this group

Andrew Tate is back—and he’s getting a hero’s welcome from right-wing podcasters

You can’t talk about the manosphere without mentioning Andrew Tate. The British-American influencer and former professional kickboxer built his platform by promoting misogynistic ideas—claiming wo

Apr 2, 2025, 10:50:04 PM | Fast company - tech
Meta and UFC team up to bring AI and VR to fans

UFC is joining up with Facebook’s parent company

Apr 2, 2025, 10:50:02 PM | Fast company - tech
An AI watchdog accused OpenAI of using copyrighted books without permission

An artificial intelligence watchdog is accusing OpenAI of training its default ChatGPT model on copyrighted book content without permission.

In a new paper

Apr 2, 2025, 8:30:07 PM | Fast company - tech
Trump signals TikTok sale will done by April 5 deadline. Who will buy it?

As the deadline to strike a deal over TikTok approaches this week, President Donald Trump has signaled that he is confident his administrat

Apr 2, 2025, 6:20:04 PM | Fast company - tech
CERN scientists release blueprint for the Future Circular Collider

Top minds at the world’s largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for 

Apr 2, 2025, 6:20:03 PM | Fast company - tech
‘Titanic 2’? YouTube is cracking down on AI-assisted fake movie trailers that fetch millions of views

A trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in James Cameron’s galactically successful series, starts by delivering on the title’s promise. Rivers of lava cascade through the fores

Apr 2, 2025, 3:50:06 PM | Fast company - tech