How far does burning calories actually go?

This might sound like a silly question. To maintain my weight I have to be at 1600 calories. I exercise a lot (including running) so today I burnt about 700 calories. I ate about 2200 calories. I was going to go on another run which is normally 3 to 5 miles long to I burn anywhere from 300 to 500 calories. At this point I feel like eating back these calories is not needed, because I've already had 2200. I guess I just feel like once I get to a certain amount of calories burnt, than when I burn more than that it doesnt really count towards my net. I've heard that you can't out exercise your diet. I feel like eating 2500 calories is a lot of food and will result in weight gain regardless if I burn it off to 1600. Am I being fearful? What is your experience or knowledge?

My weekend runs are currently burning about 2500 calories. Add that on top of my 2500 maintenance calories and that's 5,000 in a single day. Regular weekday calorie burns are around 1,000. I generally eat back all of those calories. Of course if you're full there's no reason to force yourself to eat but you don't need to short yourself more than 500 calories in a day. It's also acceptable to bank some of those and use them the following day. If you're in a bind and not hungry then break out the peanut butter. It's easy to hit your calorie goals that way.

Just check out the scale. If you're losing and you don't want to then work harder on eating them all. If you're gaining then cut back a bit. Keep in mind that if you're doing really long runs you're going to pick up some muscle recovery water weight for a day or so. Also eating a very large amount of calories will bump the scale a bit but you'll see that drop off within a day or two.