When paddling daily over long periods of time, athletes face many hurdles and body reactions that we constantly have to overcome and nurse. It could be something little like how you start to sweat so bad that it affects your vision and you have to shake like a wet dog in order to clear your eyes. Another thing is not monitoring your water consumption well enough and running out of liquid to quickly- then battling thirst and dizziness while paddling without water. A bad one for me is my lips- when I paddle my lips dry out and I get a really nasty thick film around my mouth (due to thirst and exertion) that almost seals my lips together…. An obvious hurdle is the sun and learning how to dress appropriately in order to not completely dehydrate and overheat from the hot sun and water reflection. Problems can get larger and more worrisome when doing longer distances or more intense intervals because one can start to feel their body reaching its absolute limits and learning how to recognize when you can keep going and persevere, and when to listen to your body and pain and say “enough for today” in order to not injure the body and its vital functions. Pride gets in my way sometimes in this aspect, and I tend to push even though my body is screaming STOP and end up injured, like my past pectoral tear and 2 month healing period.
Though these annoying and sometime painful reactions present themselves differently in every athlete in intensity and frequency, one thing I think all paddlers can relate to and wish there was a way to avoid- are blisters! Damn bloody blisters seem to ruin everything! Blisters are common on the thumbs and pads of the fingers where the paddle rubs against the skin. Water softens hands, and sand gets caught in these areas making the friction worse. Most commonly these are bad when you haven’t paddled for a while and your callus has weakened, then you start back training again and have to rebuild hand toughness! They are terrible and inevitable. I even get them when I re-wax my paddle shaft or switch paddles as my hands are having to readjust. Blisters are so detrimental because the one thing you need in every aspect of paddle boarding, your main tool, are your hands!
Team with all our hands blistered to pieces!
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Here is the other thing about blisters- the real pain hits when you are off the water and done training. The body will allow you to push through blister pain when paddling because of adrenaline and your brain focusing on other things such as balance, stroke technique, time, effort management, overall agonizing body aches, sometimes currents and winds… well the list goes on and on. I have had blisters break open and skin rub away to the point where my hands bleed and not notice the intense pain until finishing (or falling into the salt water and feel the burn!).
You finish your training routine and get to the shore, and now everything hits you. OUCHHH! I always struggle to admit the real pain that blisters bring me because I feel like the lesion is so little that I am a sissy to complain about a little bubble. But the honest truth is that I am crying like a baby on the inside from the pain I feel in my hands. The onset of the pain is slow at first, the basic pain and stinging while having to carry my board and paddle in, and then it hits fast and hard. I go to wash my face of sweat and it hurts to grab and rub the bar of soap around in my hands. I go to dry my body and the towel feels like sandpaper in between my raw-meat hands. And then, about an hour after, when they are dried up, the aching starts. Grabbing objects turns into a task as my hands feel cramped in a zombie-grab position.
My dad told me that every bit of pain makes you stronger, as long as it doesn’t kill you… I believe in this deeply and try to remember this every time I am pushed to my personal limits and passing milestones in my paddle board training and career. So when these horrible pesky blisters come along, I try to look at it from a positive angle instead of a defeated angle. I say to myself, “you are toughening up. These blisters will soon be callus and your baby-butt hands will soon be iron!” I don’t know how realistic this anthem is, or if it something that will work for others, but I do know that blisters will in turn be callus. Pain turns into your protection from at least one of the sports obstacles. If you can push through blisters and let them heal well, they will protect the most essential extremity to your success in my opinion- hands.
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