Rex Woodbury wakes up every morning at 6. He's running by 6:30, tracing a five-mile loop near his Foothills-area home.
His mind wanders during the half-hour runs. The Catalina Foothills High School graduate silently plots out his day, setting a mental schedule designed to get the most out of the 16 hours he'll spend awake.
"All you do is think," he said.
During those silent moments, he often thinks about his family. Rex's mother died 16 years ago, leaving behind two young sons and a heartbroken husband.
Rex and the Woodbury men have persevered, even thrived, in Kate Woodbury's memory.
Rex was one of Southern Arizona's top distance runners as a senior, winning the Wendy's High School Heisman Trophy - a national honor, awarded to the athlete who best combines achievement, academics and community service.
People are also reading…
"It comes from his mother," said Rex's father, Derrik. "I just let his mom's genes unfurl, and I got out of the way."
But Rex credits his dad for guiding both of his sons to both academic and athletic success.
Derrik has made his sons a priority since Kate's death, choosing not to remarry.
Rex's older brother, Carson, was an accomplished distance runner at Foothills and now rows for the University of Pennsylvania's crew team.
Rex will leave this summer for Dartmouth boasting a 4.28 GPA, academic curiosity and a passion to be a great runner.
"I applaud my dad," Rex said. "He's done such an incredible job. I can't speak to that enough. He's taught us discipline, motivation. Sacrifice for success, but also follow what you love."
Derrik and Kate Woodbury met after college, bonding instantly over their shared loves of medicine and running. Derrik, an orthopedic surgeon, took up the sport after playing college basketball at Holy Cross. Kate, an anesthesiologist, loved camping and ran marathons.
Kate gave birth to Carson and Rex in successive years. She was pregnant with her third child when an ultrasound showed a mass of ovarian cancer that Derrik compared to the Death Star from "Star Wars."
"One hundred days later, despite chemotherapy and surgery, she was gone," Derrik said.
Carson was 2. Rex was 1.
Derrik was devastated, and - with two young boys - desperate to leave the memories of their Connecticut home behind. He considered a handful of Western cities before choosing Tucson.
Rex played all sports as a kid, but gravitated to running in junior high school. His freshman year at Catalina Foothills was successful, he said, but well short of his standards. Rex credits a trip to the Anasazi Training Camp, a summer program held in the White Mountains, for kick-starting his passion for distance running. The week's runs and lessons taught him that simply being fast wasn't enough.
It was a lesson that Rex first learned at home.
"Talent can only get you so far," Rex said. "To be a great runner, you've got to get the aerobic base and the consistency. I realized that I was already spending time and effort on the sport. I just had to do some things differently."
Rex cut junk food and drive-thrus from his diet, chiseling his 6-foot frame to 155 pounds. He changed his sleeping habits to include eight hours a night.
The sacrifices paid off - as the team's No. 1 runner, Rex led Foothills to a Division II state cross country championship in November. He ran track this spring, helping Foothills win a state championship in the 3,200-meter relay.
Off the track, Rex remains his mother's child. The two share a piercing intelligence, a dry sense of humor and a great nose for irony. Then there's the physical similarity: Rex keeps a childhood photo of his mother in his bedroom, next to a picture of himself at the same age.
The two, Derrik said, look identical.
The Woodbury men remember Kate every May 1, the anniversary of her death, and spend Mother's Day talking about her with their aunt and grandmother.
Father's Day is just as special.
During his morning runs, Rex sometimes wonders how his life would have been different had his mother lived.
Then he thinks of his father, whom Rex calls "a superparent" and "the greatest influence in my life."
Derrik sees his wife, again, in their son.
"The day before she died, she said, 'Please don't let them forget me,' " Derrik said. "I've kept that promise."
