American Hero Series: Keith Zeier, Part I

Thirty-one hours. A myriad of trips and cruises can come and go. A flight from New York to New Zealand. It's more hours than most part-time workers accumulate in a week. Or, you can run 100 miles. Crazy right? Not for Keith Zeier. Running long distance is a pleasure cruise compared to the hell he's been through.

On U.S. Highway No. 1, known as the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys, Zeier, under the crisp sunlight on May 16, 2009, ran the Keys100 Ultramarathon from Key Largo to Key West. Gasping for air when he needed it, feeling every breath pulse through his body as he chugged along sidewalks, past coffee shops and sweating buckets, his duty that day was to finish the race in the cut off time of 34 hours.

He's always been a calculated individual: Graduating early from Sachem High School he entered the United States Marines Corp at 17. He worked through the rigors of being a Special Operations soldier; he fought overseas. The measurements were leaps of faith that took a brave young man from Holbrook into the ghostly deserts of the Middle East and sent him back altered slightly, but with the same dexterity to complete the tasks initially sought.

So when he collapsed at the 75-mile marker – 21 hours of running by then – and appeared finished, wrenched with the uneasy appearance of possibly throwing in the towel, he did the only thing he knew how; rose from the pavement, signed a waiver refusing medical attention and marched on, drenched with pride to honor his fallen comrades as he told the Special Operations Wounded Warriors Foundation he would.

There was any number of reasons for Zeier's problems at mile 75. Perhaps the 90-degree humid, sticky heat was different from the New York temperatures he was used to until the day before when he traveled at the last minute so he wouldn't miss classes at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Maybe his stomach was churning from the concoction of painkillers supporting his left leg that was nearly blown off in an improvised explosive devise bombing in 2006. As other competitors had their own issues and caught a glimpse of Zeier shaking off the medical form and staring, as he often does, with that fierce soldier look that would put a shiver down the spine of any sane man, they probably had no idea what was going through his head.

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I hated life. I was just kind of getting by. Most wouldn't expect those words to come out of Zeier's mouth, but they did. Talking quietly at the Holbrook Diner one morning this last March, Zeier, a Marine in the Second Recon Battalion and MARSOC operator, spoke of his life, of running, of the war. His energy and interest peaked when he spoke about the Special Operations Wounded Warriors Foundation. In between ordering a Greek Salad and water, he mentioned the $2,000 grant the SOWWF gave his mother Denise for gas and hotel stays while he was at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. He needed to give back, to honor the memory of others who can't run, to ease his survivor's guilt with another medicine: running.

"I wanted to do something big at that point," he says. "I wanted to do something that stood out. I wanted to run 100 miles."

Deciding to run just seven months before the race isn't only seemingly impossible, it's dangerous. Luckily, Zeier is not the faint of heart for physical ability. The mile record holder still at Seneca Middle School in Holbrook and a perennial beast in gyms, soccer fields and tracks alike, he trained with cross-fit techniques. He was also running smaller marathons in the months before his decision to run the big one.

"It's not running that I like," he says, "I like when I'm by myself. You push yourself and I'm on my own to get my head straight."

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"I was throwing up," he recalls from the race. "They told me I was really dehydrated. My oxygen level was at 75 percent when it's supposed to be at 100."

Running those last 25 miles seemed more important to Zeier since he had the ability to live his life, unlike the countless soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice. True to the Recon Creed of, "Conquering all obstacles, both large and small, I shall never quit. To quit, to surrender, to give up is to fail," he finished that race in 31 hours.

Completing a race on a sunny spring day in Florida sounds like a vacation in comparison to nearly losing his life when a bullet came within inches of his head during one attack on Easter morning in Fallujah. Running with a dull leg, head pounding, knees and ankles buckling with every stride is still better than seeing the Humvee in front of yours blown up and losing your pals, one who died in your arms. And of course cramping up and tasting the foul aroma of your own vomit, legs numb from 75 miles of pain, is still better than death, which Zeier narrowly escaped again when his Humvee was hit two months later.

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His brother Craig, a physical therapist, was there to rub his mangled left leg, sitting without any feeling, yet still throbbing in pain from the nerves shooting signals, but not connecting thanks to the severed parts of the limb. A 12-inch scar was his parting gift from the war.

"It was crazy that he was doing this," says Denise Zeier. "A lot of it was survivor guilt. He was going to make this race no matter what."

"Most people wouldn't have had the strength to get back up and keep going," Craig says. "Since then he's been a motivator and inspiration to people."

Denise grabbed a camera crew from NBC that was there to profile Zeier. He came around a bend at mile 99 and Denise handed him a Marines flag she saw hanging at a local hot dog stand. Turns out, the stand owner is a former Marine and his son had just finished boot camp. After they spoke, he offered the flag and said he would be honored if Zeier crossed the finished line holding it.

"We were all crying," Denise recalls. "Everyone was there cheering him on."

The race wasn't some personal vendetta for physical punishment, it was meant to raise money and awareness for the SOWWF. Within the first 24 hours of throwing his name in the hat, he raised $50,000. He's reached the $100,000 mark since then.

He was on Fox & Friends, the Today Show, Hannity and Fox's Happy Hour. "The money kept raising," he says.

From there, he was invited by the Yankees, who are very involved with SOWWF, to attend an on-field ceremony. The well wishes poured in. Runners World featured him as one of its Running Heroes of 2009 and a director of the New York City Marathon called, asking if Zeier would like to run in that event last year.

"I said, 'yeah,'" he said. But there is a catch. "I decided to put a 50-pound rucksack and run with boots and camo."

Reluctant for pain, Zeier quietly laughed at the 26-miler compared to the monster hurdle he leaped in Florida.

"A lot of people were feeling the ruck," he says. "They were saying, 'holy s---, what are you doing?'"

Skin worn down to the bone on his back from wearing the ruck, he muscled through the finish line in six hours and 15 minutes.

What others see as a challenge, Zeier sees as a walk in the park. What Zeier sees as obstacles, the common folk see as impossible.

It was biblical. To run the death march that is Highway No. 1 under an unforgiving, beaming sun, 10 members of his family and friends watching his every move, news crews filming his impediment through the ring of fire. It wasn't so much a serendipitous leap for Zeier since he knew his physical capabilities, and predicted the upshot. For what Keith Zeier went through and what he was running for, his 100-mile journey is what makes America a country of hope and desire and what makes him inimitable.

At the bottom of the web version of the Runners World story about Zeier, the most apropos comments were left. "We have no excuse not to run," one said. Another simply called him a, "badass." And the final one speaks volumes: "Forget Rambo and all the rest of Hollywood. This guy is a real American hero."

This is only a small part of Zeier's story. Over the next week, Sachem Patch will continue the series.