A Canadian ran over a thousand kilometers for the sake of an animation on a map

Canadian runner Duncan McCabe created an animation of a dancing figure using a GPS tracker.

RegioNews reports about it The Washington Post.

He recorded 120 individual runs as routes, which he then combined into a 27-second video. It took him 10 months of work and about 1127 km of runs to bring the idea to life.

The publication reported that last Christmas, Duncan and his wife were discussing new ideas for GPS designs. She suggested creating a flipbook-style dancing figure. McCabe planned routes using PowerPoint to visualize what the figure would look like in motion.

“It was a huge task. Each run is a separate frame, and when you put them together, you get an animation,” McCabe explained.

From January 1 to October 25, 2024, Duncan ran several times a week. Most of the runs were about 10 kilometers, but sometimes there were much longer routes.

To create diagonal lines, Duncan would pause the app, run to the next point, and then start recording again. This means that in reality he ran more than the map showed.

“Objectively, it was a terrible running experience. I looked weird, but the result was worth it,” McCabe joked.

To create the final video, the man used a video editor to combine all 120 cards and align the background.