Numbers.

I am not a numbers kind of girl, much to my husband's dismay. (Me: English major and free spirit. Him: Chemical engineer and...not-so-free spirit.)

He deals in decimal points and exactitude. I deal in "maybes" and lots of latitude. :-)

(We do meet when it comes to sports statistics, though. Maybe that's why we've been married for almost 17 years...)

But when it comes to my running, I am a fiend for stats. I want to know the mileage. I want to know the pace, the splits, the exact time.

I used to guess on times and splits and pace, which almost put me over the edge. But when I got my Garmin Forerunner for my anniversary (romantic, no?), I didn't need to guess anymore.

I run, it keeps track and I upload my information to the program on my Mac. I can run reports, see how much I've run over a designated period of time...everything.

So I decided this morning to see what my stats were from the day I first used the Garmin (Feb. 23, 2011) until this morning.

Wow.

In that time, I have run almost 1,100 miles (it's more than that because there was a couple of times I didn't have it with me when I went on a trip for work and when we went to The Bahamas).

I have run 215 hours, 49 minutes and 36 seconds.

And I have burned almost 77,000 -- yes, that's THOUSAND -- calories.

Looking at those numbers makes it real to me. Yes, I see it in the mirror, when I buy clothes. I feel it in my ankles, knees and hips.

But the numbers make it REAL.

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I ran just 15 miles this morning. I think I'm going to alternate 15- and 20-mile runs on Saturdays. I still have three months before the marathon, so I don't want to get burned out. I have a couple of 5Ks I'm going to run, too, so I have to plan for those.

After running 8 miles most mornings during the week, the 15 miles this morning didn't seem like that big of a deal.