Leeds Labour’s surprise package on why she’s a runner after cancer diagnosis

The devastating news came just five days after she’d been told she was going to be a Labour local election candidate for the first time.

In mercifully good health these days, she is now Coun Eleanor Thomson, having been elected to serve the Guiseley and Rawdon ward on Leeds City Council last month.

“The diagnosis was certainly what got me back into running,” Coun Thomson, 46, says.

“It seemed like a useful response to what was going on.

“It helps clear my head and it gave me my confidence back more than anything else, just after the shock of the whole thing.”

After undergoing a mastectomy in January 2019 and then reconstructive surgery six months later, Coun Thomson is now free of cancer.

But having defeated the disease herself, she’s now helping others to do so, having just raised £1,046 for Macmillan Cancer Research by running the Edinburgh Marathon.

She completed the race in four hours, 48 minutes and 41 seconds, a particularly impressive time given she had to balance her prep against canvassing for votes in the build-up.

“I started to enjoy it after about 20 miles, when I finally believed that I could finish!” Coun Thomson says. “The time was slower than I’d hoped, but I’m still happy.

“Training wasn’t ideal during the campaign and though I put the miles in (through leafleting), fitting in the running was quite tricky.

“My feet are still hurting from all the walking and the steps!”

Even in her early weeks as an elected representative, she’s found that running complements her new role.

“It gives me time to think and it’s often when I get the best ideas,” she says.

“I run round the ward and I see things that need sorting and I can take photos of potholes that need fixing! It’s really useful in that sense.”

Originally from East Yorkshire, Coun Thomson has enjoyed a thoroughly interesting and varied career, which includes time working in the European Parliament, an experience she says "showed politics at its best and its worst".

She’s also done relief work in flood-hit Bangladesh, been a breastfeeding counsellor and sewed patterns for a living.

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But it was not until 2017 when she became involved in politics at a local level, when she started leafleting for the Labour Party.

Her victory last month has taken many, including herself, by surprise, given she was competing in what is normally Conservative territory.

One senior Labour source even described taking Guiseley as the "upper edge of our expectations", just hours before the result filtered through.

“I was hopeful of winning,” Coun Thomson reflects.

“I really wanted it to be clear one way or the other, either 200 votes one way or the other.

“But to go from 900 down last year to winning this year was quite a shock.”

Seemingly, she’s as good at running for public office as she is running 26 mile races.