Meet The Stomp Bro's: From critical illness to marathon success
Tom Doherty and Lewis Thompson could have lost faith in life when they were diagnosed with cancer and a blood clot in their 20s - instead they started running
When Tom Doherty and Lewis Thompson crossed the finishing line at this year’s Manchester Marathon it was the latest stage of a journey which has seen the friends go from serious illness to becoming running brothers.
While Tom was forced to fight back from a cancer diagnosis and six hours of surgery in 2023, his partner in running crime, Lewis, discovered he had a blood clot in 2024 - a condition that resulted in him having a rib removed.
These days, they are collectively known as The Stomp Bro’s, a moniker under which they share their story on Instagram.
Formed in September last year to showcase their journey and help people understand both what they had been through, and what can be achieved, Stomp Bro’s is a combination of gruelling training regimes, humour, complaining about injuries, and straight-up inspiration.
Their Manchester success on April 19 saw both men record strong times - and personal bests - with Tom finishing in 3:23:04 and Lewis in 3:44:31.
And the pair have now embarked on their training for their first ultra marathon - a 100km romp round the Lake District in June.
But The Stomp Bro’s is about far more than time and distance as Tom and Lewis talk about the mental health benefits of running and champion the sport as a social pursuit.
Nasty side effects and removing a rib:
Tom hadn’t thought much of it when he first noticed a spot on his temple back in 2022.
He did take the time to visit the doctor though, where he was promptly reassured he had nothing to worry about.
As the months went by, the spot continued to get bigger until it eventually reached the size of his fingernail. Despite that, it wasn’t until a third visit to the GP that he was sent to have a biopsy.
“The biopsy results came back and they told me I’ve got melanoma,” Tom said. “At the time, I’d never heard of it. I was very naive.
“I was like, ‘it’s just skin cancer, I’m going to be fine, it’s just going to be removed, and then we get on with life’.”
The reality was far more complicated.
Although Tom did have the spot, along with some lymph nodes in his neck, removed, things didn’t end there. Having been referred to a specialist hospital, he was told he would require a year’s worth of treatment to completely remove the cancer.
“I was told all these scary things which might happen and that I would have to go through,” he said. “The treatment came with pretty nasty side effects and I had to undergo a six hour operation.
“But I’ve been all-clear since, apart from being left with a pretty big scar, which is why I’ve now got long hair to cover it.”
Meanwhile, Lewis’ health problems began when he noticed his arm had become blue and swollen after showering.
Originally, the former golf pro thought he had pulled something while at the gym, but after his wife told him to go to the doctor, the news came through that he had a blood clot.
It took his doctors a year to analyse the potential causes of his ailment and decide how to treat him, after which Lewis had to have an operation to have a rib removed.
Even now, his health concerns haven’t been fully resolved: “They removed the rib to take a bit of pressure off some veins and arteries.
“But I went back recently, and a scan showed that a bit of muscle is still pressing on a vein, so I still get my arm going a bluish colour and being quite swollen.
“I may need another operation to get that sorted.”
‘I genuinely believed I’d never exercise again’:
Tom laughs when the subject of the pairs’ age is raised in reference to their various illnesses.
“You’d think we are touching 60,” he said, “but no, I’m 31, and Lewis is 30. We were pretty young, I think I was 27, when I was diagnosed.
“As I said, when I first got it, I was so naive but then, when reality hits, you realise how serious it is.
“I remember being in a room when they told me it had spread to my lymph nodes and just literally falling to my knees and cuddling my mum and completely breaking down.
“Your whole world comes crashing down. You don’t expect that it’s gonna happen to you, especially not at 27-years-old.
“It takes a long time to process, and you need a lot of help. You need good friends and family around you, and specialists as well, who are expert in that sort of thing.”
For Lewis, it was ongoing “health anxiety” which proved to be his biggest test. It was under those circumstances that he and Tom found a connection which was to see them through all the way to the formation of The Stomp Bro’s and beyond.
The pair had previously been good friends at college until they had drifted apart. But when their paths crossed again, it was as if fate had brought them back together. They were able to understand what they were each going through, and talk through their concerns and worries.
Tom said: “When I was on treatment, I genuinely believed I’d never exercise again. I was in the mindset that my life’s never going to return to normal.
“I thought, ‘I’m stuck with this disease forever’. You go into a really negative mindset. It’s only after the treatment that you start to accept it a little bit more, and start to understand that you have a life after this, that there is more to come.
“That’s when you realise you can go back to your old self and start enjoying life again. It just takes a long time to get to that place.”
As Tom began to reach that more optimistic place, a determined Lewis was emerging from his rib removal operation, hoping to attack his recovery journey head on.
“It sounds a bit of a cliche,” he said, “but Tom was coming round to the same idea, he was running as well, and we hit a turning point where we’d been lads, we’d been out boozing, we’d done stuff and been idiots along the way, but now it was time to eat better, look after ourselves a bit better.
“And we just bounced off each other and convinced each other that we needed to, if not sort ourselves out because we’d not been that bad, but look after ourselves more.
“It gave us that kick up the backside that it was time to start looking after our bodies. We’re still young, but we are getting older, and we want to be in a good place when we turn 50, when we turn 60, we want to be healthy and fit.”
Central to their plan was that neither of them wanted to have to confront the serious illnesses, operations, treatment and pain their recent experiences had gifted them.
But why did they choose running as their weapon of choice against the prospect of future illness and ageing?
How London and Leeds shaped The Stomp Bro’s:
Scrolling Instagram is often seen as an unhealthy habit. A platform criticised for fuelling social comparison or lowering self-esteem via the highlight reel culture it promotes.
But for Tom it was the gateway to embracing the healthiest habit he’s ever taken up: running.
It was last January when he had been looking through the platform and spotted that a children’s charity close to where he lived was advertising a London Marathon spot.
“I’m quite a spontaneous person,” he said. “I like to challenge myself, and although I’d done a little bit of running in the past, I’d never gone past 10k.
“I thought I’d love to give something back to charity, especially after what I’d been through.”
Tom dived straight in, sending off his application with his personal story front and centre. It wasn’t long before the charity replied. He was in.
“I went in at the deep end,” he added. “I didn’t really know what I was doing or how to train. I had no idea about fuelling. I think the furthest I went in training was 21kms.”
Ignorance proved to be bliss, and a somewhat unprepared Tom was toeing the line at London Marathon just six weeks later, having become hooked on running.
With the atmosphere having pulled him through on the day, he was determined to dedicate more of his time to the sport - and to drag his friend into the new world of running addiction that had overtaken him.
“It can be pretty tedious running on your own sometimes,” he said. “It all started with one question - ‘would you fancy coming on a run with me?’
“And it just went from there. Lewis couldn’t even walk at times back then. He’d been lying in bed having had a rib removed.”
But Lewis, despite scoffing at the idea of running so close to an operation, had his own reasons for embracing running.
“Tom was twisting my arm a little bit,” he said. “But I just needed a reason to get running.
“Unfortunately, my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer while I was recovering, and I just thought, here’s my chance, I’m going to run for charity.
“Tom helped massively because he was already running, so he was getting me through it when things got hard.”
Lewis’ run of choice was the Leeds Marathon, and he quickly became addicted to the thrill of completing big races: “After I finished, I was thinking about ‘what are we doing next because this is unbelievable’.
“It was such a buzz finishing my first race and getting that medal around my neck, knowing I’d earned it. I had played golf professionally, but I’d never felt like that.
“When I crossed that finish line at Leeds, I was like, ‘‘wow, this is like something else’.”
Discovering the joy of running - and the desire to share it:
With Tom and Lewis, who come from Yorkshire, having both put such extreme lows behind them when battling their respective illnesses, they were all-but-overwhelmed by the excitement of their running achievements.
Tom told Running Tales that his first reaction on crossing the finishing line in London had been to burst into tears.
“It was the pure emotion that runs through your body,” he said, “especially when you’ve gone from such a low, from darkest hour of your life to best hour of your life.
“In a selfish way, you feel so proud of yourself, don’t you? It is such a sense of achievement - you can’t describe it to anyone.”
And it was the unique aspect of their twin stories, coupled with a desire to share how running had helped the mental side of their recoveries, that persuaded Tom and Lewis to start The Stomp Bro’s channel.
The name is an abbreviation of ‘Stomping Brothers,’ with stomping being used regularly in the north of England as an alternative word for running.
They post a mix of race and training updates, often interspersed with humour and always with a raw honesty, along with the latest news on their newly formed Stomp Bro’s running club.
The club meets on Sunday mornings, with the aim of encouraging people to run whatever distance at whatever pace they want to - and have a relaxing coffee afterwards.
It’s inclusive nature means the club currently combines runners who can bang out a sub-20 minute 5k and those who walk.
As well as talking about the positive aspects of running, Tom and Lewis don’t shy away from some of the sport’s downsides - not least the pain of struggling with various injuries and niggles, something which is a regular topic of conversation.
“We just chat a lot of rubbish to each other, and we just switch off for a good hour plus,” Lewis said.
“We thought if we can put that out there and show that when you run - although it doesn’t matter what you’re doing even if you’re going for a walk - and you’re doing it with one of your best mates, it makes a difference.
“If we can help one person, why would we not?”
Tom added: “You just switch off from all life stresses, even if it’s just for half-an-hour. It gives you that re-set, and we wanted to show people that no matter what you’ve been through in life, no matter what challenges you might face, there is always a way out.
“And we wanted to show that running was our way out.”
The Stomp Bro’s feed is aimed at ‘normal, everyday people’ with an ethos of encouraging everyone to embrace movement, whether through a walk, a run or jog.
The pair said their videos are simply based around being themselves, ‘being a bit stupid’ and championing the benefits - and occasional pitfalls - of running.
While they are committed to the idea of showcasing the mental, as well as physical benefits, of running, they want to do so in a way that seems natural, rather than preachy.
“We’re trying to do it in a bit of a different way,” Lewis said. “We don’t want to be constantly saying, ‘this is to help your mental health’.
“We just want people to be watching it, and thinking, ‘I could do that’. We don’t want to be shoving it in people’s faces or to come across as too serious.”
The 100km ultra challenge to raise money for Breast Cancer Now:
Tom’s London effort and Lewis’ completion of the Leeds Marathon have been followed by a host of other events.
York Half Marathon was followed by the Palma Marathon in October 2025, and then this month’s trip to Manchester.
Next in line is a step up in distance, and a change of running surface, in the form of the Lake District 100km Ultra Marathon. It is a move which encapsulates the inspiring and aspirational tone of Stomp Bro’s.
Tom said: “We just love to show people that you can do crazy challenges if you set your mind to it, through a bit of determination and a bit of resilience.
“We love challenging ourselves. When you’ve been through what we’ve been through, you just want to push yourself to limits, because you never know what’s around corner, you never know what’s coming in life.”
Both Tom and Lewis have further reasons for taking on the race as they will be raising money for Breast Cancer Now.
Incredibly, given the illnesses they faced, both Tom and Lewis’ mothers have recently been diagnosed with cancer.
On their JustGiving page, the pair write: ‘We know that running 100km is nothing compared to the fight they - and so many others - are facing. But we wanted to take on this challenge to show our support not only for our mums, but for everyone affected by this terrible disease.’
Talking about the impact running has had, Tom said: “It has given me a purpose again and a whole new lease of life.
“You can just switch your mind off, and it’s so hard to do that in today’s life. Everything’s so fast-paced, social media’s crazy.
“Running has been exactly what I need. If anyone’s stuck in two minds, I’d say just give it a go.”
It’s a sentiment Lewis agrees with: “The big thing for me if you want to get into running is just to find someone to get moving with and then roll with it.
“You’ll be really surprised at where it can end up. We’ve both been through bad times and if we didn’t have each other, we probably wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing now.
“It’s really good to have that person and just get out. If that’s a walk, if that’s a run, if that’s whatever you want to do, just go and do it.
“To run, you need to have a reason why you run. That’s quite a big message, but if you look at it a bit deeper, everyone probably has a reason to do it.
“So, just go and do it.”
What are you still doing here? Time to get stomping.
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