This is how Keefer, 28, an Army captain and helicopter pilot in the 82nd Airborne, is celebrating his safe return from a second tour in Afghanistan.
His penchant for long-distance running, which an Army Times article once noted was extreme even by military standards, was uninterrupted by his deployment.
In the otherworldly heat and dust, he would run along the fortified perimeter of the compounds where he was based, always under threat - if it wasn't incoming rockets and mortar shells, it was wild dogs and dehydration. This was his escape from the job he was there to do, flying his UH-60 Blackhawk through hostile fire to deliver attacking troops.
Through it all, he never stopped running, and he won't stop now. An ultramarathoner and Ironman triathlete who grew up in Raleigh, Keefer sees this run in early May along the shore as a trial for an Outer Banks race he envisions one day creating. It will also serve as training for long races he will run later this summer.
Still, Keefer is dogged by the same question everyone asks him: Why? He knows why he went to West Point and why he became a Blackhawk pilot. But he doesn't have an answer when asked why he's running the Outer Banks.
"I ask myself that a lot," Keefer says.
There's no prize money, no finish line, no support other than another pilot in a pickup truck. There is only a man and the road ahead.
It is a long road - not merely this week, but one that already has taken him to a war zone and back, and now extends into an uncertain future when his time in the Army is finished.
A friend on the road
His friend Princeton Soh, another Blackhawk pilot and long-distance runner, will spend the first three days of the run trailing Keefer by car, foot and bike.
The supplies include a 5-gallon Army-issue can of water and a case of MREs, the ubiquitous military meals. The night before, they slept on a dune in their Army bedrolls, awakened at 1 a.m. by a curious sheriff's deputy.
The bright stars are just like Afghanistan, Keefer writes in his journal. It's funny. I didn't want to romance about the beach when I was in that awful place for fear it would diminish my fond beach memories. Now that I'm here on the sand, I can't transform my mind to believe I'm back.
The sun is up, and so is the wind. It's a chilly morning on the beach, and the stiff breeze doesn't help. But it is coming from the north, a lucky break for Keefer. On his first day, he will be assisted by a hefty tailwind.
At precisely 7:30 a.m. on Monday, May 10, Keefer takes one last bite of an apple and sets off down the beach.
Taste of home
A few days after returning from Afghanistan last month, Keefer walked into ClydeCooper's BBQ in downtownRaleigh. This tastes like home to him, and it feels like it, too.
He eats his barbecue plate in the first booth on the right, under an American flag he flew in his helicopter during his first tour of Afghanistan. A 2001 graduate of Broughton High School, Keefer doesn't get many chances to go to Cooper's now.
Lunch there was one of the first things Keefer wanted to do upon his return. This run was the other.
In 2012, he'll be finished with his Army commitment and unsure what he will do next. He would like to make this a formal race, a few hundred driven souls like himself pounding the sand from one end of the Outer Banks to the other.
It's about 50 miles from Currituck Beach Lighthouse to Bodie Island Lighthouse and about 100 miles to the ferry dock in Hatteras. (Keefer has reserved a website: www.obxultramarathon .com .)
Matt Heisey, a West Point classmate of Keefer's who is also a helicopter pilot and long-distance runner, knows better than to doubt him. When Keefer does something, he goes the full distance.
"When he puts his mind to something, he comes up with some crazy ideas, but he follows through on them," Heisey says. "Even something like this."
To become an Eagle Scout, he created a database of veterans' graves in Oakwood Cemetery - an endeavor that required examining each of more than 20,000 tombstones over more than 100 acres.
After graduating from Broughton, he had to spend a year in a military school in Alabama to meet West Point's entrance requirements.
And now, although he is stationed at Fort Bragg, he lives in Chapel Hill, where his wife Erin is completing her doctorate in physical therapy at the University of North Carolina. That leaves him a 140-mile daily commute.
"I think he's just geared that way," Erin Keefer says. "He does that with anything. If he's cleaning his car, it's going to be clean, 110 percent, to the nth degree. It's just the way he is."
When he got back from Afghanistan, he wanted to go for a run. So he is: for a week.
High school runner
Keefer ran cross-country at Broughton, although he described himself as "not much of an athlete." When he got to West Point, he started competing in triathlons, the swim-bike-run races that require intensive cross-training.
The mileage quickly increased, and after a few years, he went to Hawaii for the fabled Ironman, which ends with a full marathon. (He has another Ironman-length triathlon scheduled this summer.) The inability to bike or swim while deployed in Afghanistan forced him to concentrate on running instead.
This run is a mere stroll compared to the Western States 100, a 100-mile race across the Sierra Nevada. Keefer ran it last summer and will run it again in June with Heisey, his West Point classmate. Keefer finished in 28 hours last year. This year, he wants to do it in less than 24. Soh will be there as well, a one-man support crew.
It is also a step toward the Marathon des Sables, a seven-day, 145-mile run across the Sahara desert in April. All supplies have to be carried by backpack, with water available only at night. Temperatures can reach 125 degrees. The route includes a 50-mile day.
"Whatever's out there, he's looked into it," Erin Keefer says. "Any race all over the world."
Entries for the Marathon des Sables are tightly restricted, with only 100 spots reserved for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined. Keefer is on the entry list for 2012 and on the waiting list for 2011.
Until then, this will have to do: a largely self-sufficient seven-day run on a different kind of sand in more forgiving circumstances.
Changing plans
By Tuesday morning, his plan already is changing. Propelled by a 10 mph tailwind Monday, Keefer tore off a quick 22.6 miles in 41/2 hours. Before sunset, he was ahead of schedule, south of Nags Head.
His original goal was to spend as much of the trip as possible running on the sand, but Soh had a hard time delivering supplies, and Keefer's wobbly legs are feeling the effects of an opening 40-mile day even more than he expected.
Looking forward to the rest of the week with some reluctance, Keefer writes in his journal . These 40 miles really took it out of me. Told Erin I questioned if I could finish. New strategy calls for conservative 25-mile days.
From now on, he'll stick to pavement. Keefer doesn't consider this a setback. He has been trained not to see it that way.
"You're taught to plan as you go," Keefer says. "Any goodArmy officer knows that the plan isn't really complete until you know the conditions on the ground."
Charlie Company
When Keefer completed flight school and arrived at Forward Operating Base Salerno in January 2007 to join Charlie Com pany of the 2nd Battalion, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, he was admitted to a group that had been training at Fort Bragg for years.
Soh had been a pilot with Charlie Company for years, and he realized quickly that Keefer was a kindred spirit. The two would spend hours running laps around the compound.
"I only planned on running two or three miles a day, but Zach got there, and I said, 'OK, let's do more,' " Soh says.
They would run the stairs on the 30-foot radar tower - simple enough, until you remember why the radar was there. There were risks involved spending that much time outdoors, and not merely sunburn. The base's location near the border with Pakistan makes it an easy target for the Taliban.
Heisey spent time at Salerno with the 101st Airborne. Once during a jog, he was caught out on the perimeter during a rocket attack, scrambling to find abunker.
"They call Salerno 'RocketCity' because you're constantly getting rocketed or mortared and always on alert for incoming," Heisey says. "It's almostimpossible to try to get a run in there."
Still, conditions at Salerno were relatively mild compared to where Keefer was stationed during his second deployment to Afghanistan. He was at the giant air base in Kandahar, working 12-hour shifts as an aviation adviser to the 82nd Airborne's 4th Brigade Combat Team.
Keefer would get out of headquarters at midnight and run for hours in the dark of night along the fence line. One night, he turned around to find himself leading a pack of wild dogs.
"You had to run at night in Kandahar, because it was sodusty," Keefer says.
"I can't describe how dusty it was, like a fog of dust. Your rack - your bed - was always covered with dust. So if you'd try to run during the day, I don't know how you would do it."
Compared to that, this is just a jog on the beach.
All the way to Hatteras
Keefer made it south of Salvo on his second day and all the way to Hatteras by the end of Day 3. That was his last day with Soh. Thursday morning, he was alone.
"I've run 100 miles," Keefer says. "It's starting to wear on me psychologically that the next step will be the farthest I've ever run."
The run through Ocracoke was supposed to be the highlight of the week. On a dreary morning, he skipped ferries from Hatteras to Ocracoke waiting for the weather to clear. That made for the most harried - and disappointing - day of the week, although he did find two shells worth keeping, one for his wife, one for his mother, who has been in a wheelchair since having a stroke six years ago.
Every beach outing, I always bring my paralyzed mother a shell, Keefer writes in his journal. She loves calico scallop shells. With the exception of Erin, she's the only person I know who loves the beach more than me. I hate she can't enjoy it like she once did.
That left the run across desolate Cedar Island. With no support and no stores for 22 miles, he doubled his water supply to more than 13 pounds. So many times, he has raced through this stretch in his car.
But on this day, surrounded by nothing, he saw everything: ancient minnow traps; wild irises, his favorite flower, growing naturally in ditches; bush after bush laden with ripe blackberries. The day he dreaded the most became the most memorable.
As I ran through the town of Cedar Island, the town appeared to be waking up, Keefer writes in his journal. I spoke with a few fellas sitting on the tailgate of their pickup truck parked in their front yard. They were of course shocked when I told them I was going to Beaufort, which was 30 miles away. I didn't even mention the fact that I had already gone 120 miles!
'A different person'
Other than his stubble, his appearance has not varied: White hat, black sunglasses with blue mirrored lenses, a long-sleeve white T-shirt, olive-green running shorts, black nylon gaiters on his ankles to keep sand out of his shoes, and a green Army backpack with an American flag.
That's what he wore the final day, from his in-laws' house in Pine Knoll Shores to the Emerald Isle bridge - what would have been the easiest day if it hadn't followed six grueling days - but as Keefer raced toward the finish, something had changed.
It wasn't until he made his way around the sweeping right hand curve at the end of Emerald Isle and saw the bridge over Bogue Sound looming before him that he became aware of it.
"I think I'm a different person after doing it. I mean that honestly," Keefer says. "I'm not saying that to sound cliché. I think, in my mind, I'm much more capable and aware of what my limitations are as a runner and as an Army officer."
At 11:30 a.m. May 16, after seven days, he reaches the end. He steps onto the bridge, slows to a halt and turns around.
If he wasn't sure when he planned this run why he was doing it, he knows now. When he writes his final journal entry that night, the words come easily:
Life is rarely as definitive as running. It's easy to measure your success via running shoes. Goals are easily measured in miles and times. I like that about running. It gives me a purpose in the sport, push your limits and measure your ability. I haven't failed yet at a distance I set out to tame. It makes me wonder where my breaking point is. What will give out first, my breath or will?
