It was around Mile 3 of the New York City Half-Marathon on March 20 when Rex Woodbury felt his collar begin to tighten.
This is not some kind of running metaphor, like hitting the wall.
His collar was actually tightening.
Because he was running a half-marathon in a suit and tie.
Because this is just what Rex Woodbury does.
He sets goals — even absurd ones — and he reaches them.
He was a Catalina Foothills High School star, a three-year team captain on the track and state champion cross-country teams, a High School Heisman winner, bound for Dartmouth. Now he’s an Ivy League graduate and a first-year analyst at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street.
Hence, the suit.
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“I was reading an article in December in The Washington Post about a guy setting the world record for running a half-marathon in a suit,” he said. “I thought it was pretty funny, pretty cool. It’s like the record was almost tailor-made for me, no pun intended.”
There is a Guinness World Record for fastest half-marathon dressed as a vegetable (Ronnie Haynes, 1 hour 25 minutes 59 seconds). There is a Guinness World Record for fastest half-marathon dressed as a shoe (Gary Betty, 1:43:28).
And, yes, there is even a Guinness World Record for fastest half-marathon in a suit.
Or, a new one, rather, because Woodbury demolished the previous standard.
While still awaiting verification — or at least a placement on the GWR website — Woodbury’s time of 1:18:40 bested Gihan Amarasiriwardena’s previous record of 1:24:41 by more than six full minutes.
“I thought it would be funny and get some laughs, but I saw it as a personal challenge,” Woodbury said. “This became sort of a personal goal — is this something I can do? It was a fun way to combine two things I’m really interested in and passionate about, and around mile 11.5 I ran right past my office, and this is what I wear 95 percent of my waking hours.”
Woodbury is a first-year analyst so he’s busy. Let’s just say that he doesn’t have much time for midday matinees.
For now he mainly analyzes and advises on mergers and acquisitions, building financial models, working to value companies. It’s not the cutthroat buying-and-selling-and-buying of a Wolf of Wall Street, but it is intense work, with long hours and little room for error.
Particularly last Sunday.
“I felt really good for the first mile or so, but probably around Mile 3, you hit that point – uh oh, 10 miles to go – and I’m starting to get uncomfortable, my collar is too tight and I really wish I was wearing a mesh singlet,” he said. “I knew it was going to be a long 10 miles, but I rode the crowd through the rest of it.”
The crowd, and one heck of a support system in his father, Derrik, and older brother, Carson, a medical student at Johns Hopkins. The family was featured in a Star article on Father’s Day 2011 about their perseverance since Kate, the boys’ mother, died from ovarian cancer when they were 2 and 1. Five years after the newspaper profile, their bond is just as tight.
Carson, who had a brutal test to study for this week, came up from Baltimore; Derrik, an orthopedic surgeon, flew in from Tucson. They chased him around the city, with cameras in hand, trying to capture the day.
“He only ran 13 miles and got all this attention and we — if you add up what we ran — we ran about 40, and no one has asked us for our autographs,” Derrik said. “It’s a touchy subject.”
This is just what the Woodburys do.
Derrik said it felt no different than when he chased his boys throughout Tucson, chronicling their high school careers. He called it a nostalgic sense of joy.
“It never stops — you kind of think the support you give them, the ear and the advice might stop as they leave the nest,” he said. “But at least with my two boys, it doesn’t stop. They have decisions to make, choices, work to do. (Singer) Joni Mitchell said your dreams lose some of their grandeur coming true. What I try to instill in them is to enjoy what they do, put in the time and devotion and success will come, and happiness will come, too.”
Derrik credits the boys’ success — one an investment banker, the other a budding doctor, both Ivy League graduates — to their mother. Kate Woodbury was an anesthesiologist and an avid runner, too. She died in 1996; Derrik has not remarried.
“They are their mother’s children,” he said. “I was just the driver of the car. I could order pizza with the best of them. If they caught on fire, I’d put them out.”
Rex gives his father a little more credit.
“My dad and brother have been instrumental in really believing in me and supporting me,” he said. “It’s that exact support system that I attribute to helping me become self-confident and motivated.”
How motivated?
Well after his half-marathon and his new world record, Rex sat with his family for a quick bite, and then it was right back to the office. Sundays might as well be Tuesdays in the New York banking world, and he couldn’t spare a day off.
