It’s back to the grindstone for trans-Pacific rower
John Beeden returns to work after 209 days alone at sea
He just rowed solo across the Pacific Ocean. What’s John Beeden going to do now? Go back to work. “I need to earn some money, I guess, and pay my dues,” Beeden told the Star from a Sydney hotel room Tuesday.
Beeden, who was born in England but has lived in Burlington since 2004, arrived back in Toronto Thursday evening after a 209-day voyage that took him 13,700 kilometres across the world, powered solely by his arms.
By Jan. 2 he’ll be back to work planning sports exhibitions. Beeden is a self-employed facilitator of athletic events and is contracted to take care of anything from sourcing venues to setting up registration for events including the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. The London Marathon, in April, will be the first task on his list once he is back at work.
Just days after making landfall in Cairns, Australia, around 10 a.m. Sunday, local time, Beeden said he’s happy to be getting back to a sense of normalcy.
Even if it means giving up the solitude, something he was starkly reminded of when standing in line with frustrated travellers waiting for their delayed flight to Sydney.
“That kind of started making me think, ‘Being on your own on the boat is not such a bad thing,’ ” he joked.
That said, he doesn’t plan to be alone on a boat for such a long spell any time soon.
“I wouldn’t consider myself an adventurer, that’s not my thing. My thing is running and family stuff and cottaging and all that.”
Although he’s in great shape, having spent the past seven months rowing for five hours a day, his return to running won’t come easy. Used to racking up 60 kilometres in an average week, his first strides post-Pacific crossing lasted only 20 minutes before his legs were shot.
When the 53-year-old left San Francisco last June in his six-metre boat “Socks II,” he was searching for a challenge. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 2011, a 53-day row, he was hungry for more.
“I didn’t feel that pushed me to the edge. So I’d gone looking for some- thing a bit tougher, and the Pacific was it.”
“Now I know the immensity of the challenge,” he said. “I don’t really have anything to prove to myself.”
Instead, he’s looking forward to a summer at his cottage near Parry Sound with his wife, Cheryl, and their two daughters.
He’ll likely have a bit more company than usual, too. Cottage neighbours who only knew him as the man rowing across the pristine lake checked in on his progress all summer long. Old friends read about the voyage in the newspaper and emailed him after 20 years.
“It’s strange how cutting yourself off from everybody actually makes you better connected in a sense.” With files from Peter Goffin