He feared the worst for them, and like almost everyone else in New York on that terrible morning, felt the sense of rising panic around him. "I just needed to get away," recalled McDermott, who works with computer systems for TIAA-CREF, a teacher's annuity fund. "I needed to get home."

McDermott heard that the bridges and tunnels were closed. He knew that Penn Station would be a madhouse. Some of his co-workers were talking about getting hotel rooms, hitchhiking. He had a better idea: A veteran of seven marathons and a top age group competitor in local races, McDermott decided to run home . . . all the way to Long Beach.

McDermott went to the Sports Authority on Third Avenue. He bought a pair of black shorts, a pale blue sleeveless shirt and two PowerBars. He considered buying a couple of packets of energy gel, as well, but then decided against it. "I said, 'No I don't need the caffeine today,'" he said. 

He went back to his office, changed out of his work clothes and into his new running outfit. He then called his wife, Alison, and told her his plans. "No, she wasn't surprised," McDermott said when asked his wife's reaction. "She's been through the running thing with me."

Armed with his PowerBars, employee ID, cell phone and $5, he laced up the black Nike cross-trainers he uses as his "walking to work" shoes and headed out the door just before 11 a.m. McDermott first ran up 46th Street to the 59th Street Bridge. As he jogged over the bridge, he saw a Poland Spring truck stuck in the last wave of traffic allowed to cross. Figuring he was going to need water, he called out to the driver, who traded him a bottle of Poland Spring for a PowerBar.

On the Queens side of the bridge, he began to head toward Brooklyn, but realized he didn't know the borough well enough to find his way to the South Shore. So he doubled back and followed signs to the LIE. He knew that running on the expressway normally is prohibited. But, McDermott figured, "What are they going to do? It's the craziest day in the world; they're going to kick me off?"

As it turned out, there was little traffic and, as he had predicted, police had more important things on their minds that day. He ran on the shoulder for a few miles before exiting onto Woodhaven Boulevard. He stopped there at a deli to buy a bottle of Gatorade. No one looked twice at a guy on line in running clothes. 

Little did they know he was an office worker on his way home. "It's not like I was carrying a briefcase," he said, laughing. (He'd left that with his work clothes in his office.)

He followed Woodhaven Boulevard south all the way through Queens, pausing at a gas station in Howard Beach to refill his water bottle, then continued south on Cross Bay Boulevard and into the Rockaways. Eventually, he made his way to Beach Channel Drive, following it east before turning south onto the Rockaway Beach boardwalk. There, he decided to take a break. Up to that point, the run had been somewhat of an adventure, and his mind had been focused on navigating his route home. 

But there, on the nearly empty Rockaway boardwalk, on what was a gorgeous late summer day, weather-wise, the gravity of what was happening back in the city he had left began to hit him. So powerful were the emotions he felt at that point that he began to weep as he retold the story, days later.

"I [was] looking on the ocean on this peaceful day," he said. "Everything is just so calm . . . all nature there undisturbed. But I turned around, and you could see the smoke, and just know what's there is the worst thing on the face of the Earth . . ."

As he continued to run, he wondered about the fate of his friends . . . and of his country. "I wondered, 'Who died? Is this going to be a war?'" McDermott continued on, stopping at the very end of the boardwalk at a place called, appropriately enough for a man eager to get home, "Almost Paradise" - a well-known beach establishment, where he bought another bottle of water.

He crossed into Nassau County, then over the Atlantic Beach Bridge, where he picked up one of his regular training routes: Bay Boulevard, down to Beech Street to Park Avenue, up to the end of the canals, and, finally - at about 4:30 p.m. - he arrived at his home on Curley Street, where his wife and two daughters, 9-year-old Callan and 6- year-old Payton, were waiting for him.

McDermott estimated he ran about 25 miles on Sept. 11. Counting his walking and rest breaks, it took him about five hours. It was time well spent, he figured. "It cleared my head, gave me time to think. At one point, I said to myself, 'This is probably better than sitting and watching the videotapes [of the explosion] again and again.'"

There was mixed news waiting for him. Two of his friends in the World Trade Center had escaped unharmed. A third, a female colleague from the city and a runner, was missing. McDermott made it home. But one of the realizations he came to during the run was that there was more to do. Two years ago, he organized something called World Run Day - a somewhat open-ended charity event that he promoted, mostly through the Internet. The idea was for people anywhere in the world to run any distance - around the block or a marathon - and then donate any amount of money to any charity they chose.

Last year, about 400 runners from 30 states and four countries participated on World Run Day and raised about $26,000 for 50 charities.

This year, McDermott established some events around the world that are specially linked to World Run Day. So far, event directors in 20 countries and 40 cities worldwide have committed to hosting an event of at least 100 runners or more on that day. This year's World Run Day will be held Nov. 11 - two months to the day after the attack. 

He is asking all runners or walkers who will participate around the world to donate to charities related to victims and families of the tragedy that he was able to run from.

Seems that, in addition to a strong pair of legs, Bill McDermott has a big heart.

For more information on World Run Day, visit www.runday.com .

MARATHON MAN TAKES OWN PATH
Heads for WTC to honor friend

By John Hanc
SPECIAL TO NEWSDAY

November 4, 2001

This morning, long before the 10:50 a.m. starting gun of the New York City Marathon, Bill McDermott will cross his finish line.

McDermott's 20-mile run (after the fact measured at 27 mi.) from his home in Long Beach to lower Manhattan - is six miles shorter than what the marathoners will do. But in a sense, this is the culmination of a far longer journey. His run will close the circle on a solo odyssey that began Sept.
11, while also serving as a memorial to a friend who didn't survive that day. 

McDermott was in his office at Third Avenue and 47th Street when he heard the news about the World Trade Center attacks. Distraught and concerned - and, like most other commuters, wanting to get out of the city as soon as possible - McDermott walked to a nearby Sports Authority, purchased a pair of running shorts and T-shirt and, wearing the old running shoes he used to walk around the
city, ran all the way to Long Beach. It took him 5 1/2 hours to cover the approximately 25 miles.

McDermott - a computer systems coordinator for TIAA-CREF, the teacher's annuity fund - made it home that night, but his friend Nina Bell did not. Bell, 39, was a runner, too, and a former colleague of McDermott's at TIAA-CREF. They had competed in many Corporate Challenge races together and shared the love of the sport.

"She was filled with life," McDermott said.

In the first week of September, Bell started a new job with the insurance company Marsh McLennon in the World Trade Center. In the days after the attacks, McDermott sought news about his friend. Nobody had heard from her. "Little by little, you lose faith," he said. "Then it finally sets in."

Eventually, McDermott got in contact with Bell's family on the West Coast. When they told him they were planning to come to New York this weekend to clean out her apartment, an idea clicked in his head. On Marathon Sunday, a day when New York is united in running, he would run back from Long Beach to Manhattan - to Ground Zero this time - in honor of his friend.

McDermott, 46, is calling it his virtual NYC Marathon. He'll start at about 6 a.m. from his home on Curley Street, run through Long Beach and continue west along Rockaway Boulevard. He'll cross over the Marine Parkway Bridge and follow Flatbush Avenue through Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Bridge and into lower Manhattan.

He's not sure how close he can get to the World Trade Center site, or exactly what he'll do when he gets there. Perhaps he'll hold a moment of silence in Bell's honor and leave a photo of her somewhere.

He'll speak to her family at some point that day, maybe meet them later, if possible. Before that, he'll jog to Battery Park and look past New York Harbor to the Verrazano Bridge to watch the start of the NYC Marathon. 

McDermott has run the NYC Marathon twice before. This "virtual marathon" will be different. He'll be alone. No one will high-five him at the finish line, and that, he said, is fine. "I'm not racing it," he said. "It's an expression ... a symbolic run for myself." 

Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc.