CARBONDALE, Ill. (WSIL) -- Music blared through the speakers at Saluki Stadium to motivate the hundreds walking to honor the many victims of the World Trade Center Attacks.
Monday marked 22 years since the September 11, 2001 attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania.
About 300 people arrived to the stadium around 6 a.m. to hear remarks from Air Force Col. Jessica Dwyer, the lead organizer of the first 9/11 Saluki Stair Climb.
"It was tough but doesn't even amount close to what they did that day," said SIU sophomore and Army ROTC member Blake Mays. "I'm shaking a little bit."
Participants were challenged to walk up and down 110 flights of stairs, one round trip for each floor in each of the towers. People could choose to walk each flight of stairs four times or the same flight of stairs 110 times.
Many arrived in exercise attire but some dressed in full gear to get as close to the experience of a firefighter responding on 9/11 as possible.
"I feel absolutely exhausted," said John Needham of the Carbondale Township Fire Department. "Doing this in full gear and going just around four laps gives me a mindset of what they had to go through that day."
Captain Kyle Darnell and Emma Gass of the West City Fire Department wore their gear on a cool Monday morning. Darnell says conditions were favorable, unlike those firefighters experienced on 9/11.
"You got all that heat on top of you," said Darnell. "What courage they had that day to risk it all for complete strangers. That's dedication right there."
Some participants like Mays and SIU senior Mason McFarland, who's in the Air Force ROTC, weren't alive to see 9/11 happen but sympathize with those who saw it unfold in real time.
"I might not be able to relive the actual feelings that I might've felt then I see the sorrow in their actions and their feelings," said McFarland.
Tom Kadela, captain of the southern Illinois chapter of the non-profit group Team Red, White & Blue, was at Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport in Texas when the planes hit the towers that morning.
But it wasn't the carnage that stuck out to Kadela. It was the effect it had on the country.
"I really remember that time of just being awestruck at the unity that we had the support we had for each other," said Kadela.
"We just kind of banded together."