the makings of a bad day

A few months ago, I came across a viral Reel on Instagram in which Alexi Pappas, an Olympic runner, shared a nugget of wisdom from her coach about the Rule of Thirds. She explains, 

‍“When you're chasing a dream or doing anything hard, you're meant to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time...and if the ratio is roughly in that range, then you're doing fine.”

She goes on to say that “if you feel too good all the time or too bad, then you have to look at if you’re fatiguing or not trying hard enough”.

It’s something I’ve kept in mind as I’ve gone through this season, curious if my sessions followed the rule of thirds. After each day in my training journal, I’d mark the session as a 1 (crappy), 2 (okay), or 3 (good). 

The process made me dig deeper and ask, what makes a day bad vs. what makes it good? 

When it comes to climbing, there aren’t always easy metrics to defer to. There isn't a time I'm trying to hit or an amount of weight I'm trying to lift. Sure, we have climbing grades... but we know that those are subjective and not necessarily a reliable measurement.

Is a day "good" or "bad" based solely on physical performance or are there factors like how I felt climbing or my mentality.. or if I had fun?

These are questions I want to dig into over the next few newsletters.