“Iremember sitting in the bath on a Sunday night and thinking about who on the squad was faster than me and how I would beat them.” Jake Woods is retracing the emergence of his competitive instinct as a teenage swimmer – leaving behind his inactive child self and transforming into an athletic man. “As I lost weight and gained confidence, I built myself up through my own sheer will.” Over the next few years he reached national level in the pool, qualified as a beach lifeguard in his native Sunderland, and while at university threw himself into triathlon. “My first race was a half-Ironman,” he grins, “and I did just over six hours, which I thought was totally fine as a first attempt.”
After moving to Glasgow and qualifying as an architect, Woods continued to take part in running and triathlon events to keep fit. Three years ago, aged 27, he was running the 2019 Glasgow half-marathon when his right arm inexplicably swelled up. “Initially I thought my watch was done up too tight, so I loosened it, and
