We deal with a subshift of finite type and an equilibrium state μ for a Hölder continuous function. Let αⁿ be the partition into cylinders of length n. We compute (in particular we show the existence of the limit) $li{m}_{n\to \infty }{n}^{-1}log{\sum }_{j=0}^{\tau ₙ\left(x\right)}\mu \left(\alpha ⁿ\left(T^j\left(x\right)\right)\right)$, where $\alpha ⁿ\left(T^j\left(x\right)\right)$ is the element of the partition containing $T^j\left(x\right)$ and τₙ(x) is the return time of the trajectory of x to the cylinder αⁿ(x).