Two American flags are closing in on New York City after being carried continuously for more than 200 miles in a running tribute marking 25 years since the September 11 attacks.
At 11am BST on Friday, the flags should be moving through the Bronx on the penultimate section of their journey, provided the pace recorded overnight holds. The final group is due to take over shortly before 7am in New York, with the relay scheduled to reach Broadway and Fulton Street at 8.30am local time, or 1.30pm in Ireland and Britain.
The live tracker showed about 202 of the 227.75 miles completed shortly after 9am BST. At that point, the runners were seven minutes ahead of schedule with approximately 26 miles remaining.
There is no race to win and no individual finishing time to record. The aim is simply to keep both flags moving from Boston to the World Trade Center site, through two nights and more than 37 hours on the road.
Twenty Five Sections for Twenty Five Years
The inaugural 9/11 Memorial Relay began at Boston Public Garden on Wednesday evening, September 9th.
Its 227.75 mile route has been divided into 25 sections, one for every year since the attacks. Each section measures roughly 9.11 miles and occupies a planned 90 minute block, requiring the runners to maintain a pace of about 9 minutes and 40 seconds per mile.
One group carries the flags before handing them directly to the next. The movement continues during the day and throughout the night, with support crews accompanying the runners along the route.
Participants can complete an entire section or join for only part of one. The rules are deliberately different from those of a conventional relay race. Groups remain together, nobody runs ahead and there is no reward for reaching a handover early.
The flags, rather than a stopwatch, are the focus.
Turning a Flight Path into a Route on Foot
Organisers have called the project Reclaim the Route.
American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 both departed Boston on the morning of September 11th, 2001. The two hijacked aircraft were flown into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center.
The relay carries one flag for each flight. Its organisers describe the journey as an attempt to cover the same ground on foot and turn a route associated with destruction into one of remembrance and shared effort.
The runners could not simply begin at Boston Logan Airport and follow the most direct roads towards New York. Pedestrians cannot use the harbour tunnels, so a legal route was mapped from Boston Public Garden and down through New England.
From Massachusetts, the flags travelled through Providence, along the Rhode Island shore and into Connecticut. The route continued through New London, New Haven, Bridgeport and Stamford before entering New York and approaching the city through the Bronx.
Every mile has been covered on foot.
The Final Approach Through New York
By the time this article is published, the flags are expected to be somewhere between Pelham Manor and Third Avenue on section 24.
That part of the route carries the relay through the Bronx, passing Boston Road, the Bronx River Greenway and East 163rd Street. Five runners committed to covering the entire section.
The final handover is scheduled for around 7am local time at Third Avenue and Courtlandt Avenue. The last group has 32 runners committed to the full section, with another 15 registered to join for part of it.
Their route crosses the Third Avenue Bridge before continuing down Fifth Avenue, past Central Park and towards Lower Manhattan. Members of the public have been invited to meet the flags at Washington Square Park at 8am and accompany them over the final mile and a half.
The finish is planned for 8.30am at Broadway and Fulton Street, beside St Paul’s Chapel and directly opposite the World Trade Center site. A short memorial service will follow.
St Paul’s Chapel survived the collapse of the towers without losing a window. It subsequently became a place where recovery workers ate and rested during the months that followed the attacks, giving the relay a finish carrying its own connection to the events of 2001.
The Names Behind the Distance
The tribute extends beyond the two flags and the figures built into its route.
Relay For America has created a memorial containing the names of the 2,977 people killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard the four aircraft on September 11th.
A second section recognises people whose lives were affected in the years that followed, including members of emergency services and others nominated by families and firehouses.
The distance tells people how far the flags have travelled. The names explain why they are being carried.
A Second Journey Across America
This is not the organisation’s first major relay of 2026.
Earlier in the summer, Relay For America carried an American flag 3,016 miles from the Pacific coast to Washington DC. That journey crossed 15 states over 20 running days and finished on July 4th.
The Boston to New York undertaking is much shorter, but its continuous format leaves no quiet period. From the moment the flags departed Boston on Wednesday evening, somebody has been responsible for carrying them towards New York.
If the schedule holds, that responsibility will finally end at approximately 1.30pm BST today, when the two flags complete their journey beside the site where the two flights from Boston came to their devastating end 25 years ago.
The flags can be followed through the official Relay For America live tracker.
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