Practicing awake running means relating to one's own body, including one's ideas about one's own body-- about what we think it is, was, or should be. This is the very beginning and the foundation of how to work with the relationship between mind and body.
Most people can get sidetracked by running's reputation as a way to get in shape or lose weight. We might be used to thinking of strenuous activities as physical training, in the same way that studying for an exam is mental training. That aerobic exercise is a "stress reliever" is well known and documented, but we are not talking about physical activity as a salve for mental tension, which may surprise some readers.
To approach meditation (in this case running meditation) as a curative or theraputic activity, although valid, is not correct from the standpoint of the Buddha and what he actually taught. Yes, the lessening of our own suffering (and by extension that of others) is a key part of Buddhism, but the notion of some technique or strategy to "feel better" is not part of this tradition's central teachings. Meditation, as taught by the Buddha, is a way of relating to our world that is without ambition or speculation about "something else". Whatever we think we have "found" or acquired through meditation is usually simply a temporary aspect of our experience.
This instruction on how to regard our own experience, whether it be pleasure, pain or some combination, is fundamental to what the Buddha called "Right View". These teachings were the Buddha's way of orienting his students' outlook properly so that they could fully engage the path to liberation, as he taught it.
A fundamental pillar of the teachings on View is the notion that all we can really know is contained within our own personal experience. Another way to say this is that nothing exists outside the realm of the sense perceptions. Even thoughts, with their rich and dizzying complexity and ability to take us far away, are an aspect of our mental activities. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said it very well: "This whole world is mind's world, the product of mind." (Heart of the Buddha, Ch.3).
The Buddha was clear on this point because he was trying to save his disciples the arduous trials and errors he himself underwent to discover the futility of looking for anything outside his own experience. His method of direct observation led him to understand the logical impossibility of a "self-other split". The Buddha certainly realized the potential to improve one's understanding, but any concept, ambition, description, analysis or speculation about one's understanding is in no way separate from the object of one's understanding.
So too the awake runner needs to be alert for any notion of self improvement, physical fitness, credentials or outcome. Because the practice of awake running is to simply look at our perceptions while running, ambition or physical idealism are just more perceptions. The awake runner does not "train", per se. She merely runs and observes. Distance, speed, leg strength, V02max are all biproducts of that running and that observation. Because the runner and the observer are the same, the practice of awake running is its own goal.
For new runners, the lack of traditional running experience can be a benefit. Former or current competitive runners will be asked to tame their impulse to "improve" as runners. Awake running does not preclude the practitioner from being fast, or even being a champion, but that is but a bi-product and is not an indication of an qualitative results in relation to the contemplative aspect of running as meditation..
In the Buddha's foundational teachings on mindfulness we find specific instructions on how to regard one's body. These instructions encourage the practitioner to let whatever thoughts, ideas, aspirations, images and the like, of her own body slip away and allow ourselves to feel our bodies in real time. This is the experience of the body that comes before any judgement- before "I'm winded" or "I'm feeling strong". It is simply the raw sensation of our physical selves while running.
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