All I Ask For Are Two Worthy Competitors...Steroid Free
Two worthy competitors, matched in every way, enter the sea. They have riled themselves up to this dangerous feat of strength, egging each other on just for the sheer hell of it. Who will emerge triumphant, having reached the agreed-upon destination first, seems impossible to predict. But the sea is not a controlled environment. Breca could never move out farther or faster from me than I could manage to move from him. Shoulder to shoulder, we struggled on for five nights, until the long flow and pitch of the waves, the perishing cold, night falling and winds from the north drove us apart. The deep boiled up and its wallowing sent the sea-brutes wild. Beowulf slays no fewer than nine monsters of the deep before tumbling, exhausted, onto the strand. He has, in a technical sense, lost the original contest with Breca — but only by accepting, and winning, a contest with the sea itself. He does not call for a rematch; his submission to the vagaries of ...