On September 11th 2001, off-duty firefighter Stephen Siller abandoned his gridlocked pickup truck at the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery tunnel and ran the 3.5 miles to the World Trade center with 70lbs of gear on his back. He was one of the brave souls who made the ultimate sacrifice that day, perishing as he searched for his Squad.

Every year a growing number of people gather to run that same route as a tribute to Stephen’s ultimate sacrifice, and raise money for his charity. The crowd has now grown to well over 15,000 people, and brings throngs of viewers out as well. Running through the tunnel this year, I was really struck by the size and diversity of the crowd, noticing people from fire deparments all over the country interested to see where the race participants were from, so I scraped the list of participants and geocoded their hometowns. To my surprise, the participant base came from all over the country as well as dozens of international runners.  There are races in NYC just about every weekend, but this one stands alone as an amazing tribute to the human spirit and courage in the face of adversity. 

You can download the KML here and see it for yourself. Video coverage of the event.

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