The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" is a short story by Alan Sillitoe, published in 1959 as part of a short story collection of the same title. The work focuses on Smith, a poor Nottingham teenager from a dismal home in a working class area, who has bleak prospects in life and few interests beyond petty crime. The boy experiences social alienation and turns to long-distance running as a method of both emotional and physical escape from his situation. The story was adapted for a 1962 film of the same title.
When he is caught by the police for robbing a bakery, Smith is sentenced to be confined in Ruxton Towers in Essex, a Borstal (young offenders institution) for delinquent youths. He seeks solace in long-distance running, attracting the notice of the school's authorities for his physical prowess. Smith is offered a light workload for his last six months at Ruxton Towers if he wins an important cross-country competition against a prestigious public school. For Ruxton Towers to win the cross-country race would be a major public relations boost for the Borstal administrators.
However, when the day of the race arrives Smith throws victory away. After speeding ahead of the other runners he deliberately stops a few metres short of the finishing line, though well ahead and easily able to win. He lets the other runners pass him and cross the finishing line, thereby losing the race in a defiant gesture aimed against his Ruxton Towers administrators. In deliberately losing the race, Smith demonstrates his free spirit and independence. The response of the Borstal authorities to Smith's action is heavy-handed, and Smith resigns himself to the drudgery of manual labour he is returned to. However, looking back on his actions, he has no regrets.
Long-distance running gives the character an ability to escape from society without the pressures of a team, which may be found in other athletic stories. Additionally, Sillitoe gave running a political perspective that changed the vision of a literary runner. Sillitoe's character Smith uses running as a way to mentally reflect, allowing Smith to give clarity to his political insights and share them with the reader. Through running, Smith begins to understand and become aware of the class divisions in Britain.
During the period that Sillitoe wrote "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" the idea of the runner was changing dramatically. Helen Small states, "...the weight of literary attention seems to be focused on a 'pre-professional era'—either written at that time or looking back at it for inspiration".
Many critics and colleagues of Alan Sillitoe regard him as a member of the "Angry Young Men" movement, though Sillitoe himself disliked the label. It was associated with writers who created "belligerent and opinionated" characters, and "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" suggests a confrontation with the class issues of the time. Smith says "in the end the governor is going to be doomed while blokes like me will take the pickings of his roasted bones and dance like maniacs around his Borstal's ruins". It has been suggested that Sillitoe was never simply an "Angry Young Man" but had a deep and abiding hatred for the British class system, and that his and Smith's views were not very different.