Barely.

I’ve also long maintained that the best climbs are the ones where serious climbers, giving their best, either barely succeed or barely fail. When giving your best, of course, “failure” is not a truly accurate term. To be sure, there’s a difference between internal success, like the much-talked-about “personal experience,” and clipping the chains or crossing the finish line; for objective reporting of results, we shouldn’t confuse the two. Yet either way, barely succeeding feels a lot better than barely failing. From which do we learn more? And where do we go from there?

Read the rest at The Cleanest Line.