Day 37

Day 37
This is topic I wanted to cover one day and I share it only to give you an idea of some of the physical issues that come up on a trip over months and thousands of miles. They are unpleasant but I gladly make the sacrifice to enjoy this journey.
I took a full day off today, I slept and stretched for most of the day. I have been having increasing issues with my arms and hands. I had figured that I would have upper body issues given the lower body problems I encountered while hiking the 2100+ mile Appalachian Trail. Some people have started to use the term ultra endurance for these types of adventures were someone runs, walks, paddles, cycles etc for 10 plus hours a day for weeks on end. At it's most simple, I sit in the boat and force my mind and body to paddle until one or both scream "enough!" My hands and wrists are the point were the rubber meets the road. After several hours gripping the paddle and moving the water I have to force my fingers to fully open and restore blood flow. Slowly as the days passed the feeling in the ends of my fingers started to go numb. It started with the middle finger and then ring finger, same as with my feet on the hike, longest to shortest. I know the constant impact greatly reduces blow flow so my logic is the longest finger/ toe goes first. There is sometimes a "ghost" pain in the finger tips, pain but no reason for it. The numbness from the second joint forward doesn't cause any real problems other than when typing. As for my hand as a whole, even when not paddling my hands want to grip the paddle so they ball up into a fist. Throughout the day I stretch my fingers and massage my hands when I can. Despite my efforts I still wake up a couple times a night because my hands are a super tight fist. My arm muscles have reacted much like my legs doing the hike, they want to go 24 hours a day. After hours of the nerves firing, telling the muscles to work, they are fried. I stop padding but on a more basic level the nerves continue to fire. It shows as the slow tightening of the muscles, some times a full arm twitch or jerk and other times shooting pain or ghost pain.  What I do in the evening is a routine I began while hiking. My dinner including hot coco after is designed to get 1 gallon of water into my system to offset any dehydration and refill on calories.  The next part is massage, yoga/stretching using all available resources. Hanging from tree branches, using tree trunks to hold a stretch, rubbing a knotted muscle against a bump on a tree. and all the yoga positions I can remember. My main goal in all this, is to get as many hours of sleep as possible before I am awaken by some pain. I have even gotten creative in my sleeping position, I kept waking up on my side with arms and fists balled up against my chest so..I started sleeping on my belly with my arms to my sides. This works better most of the time until the other night when my arm and hand flexed to the "look at my muscles" position, my arm nerves fired and I punched my sleeping self in the ear..hard! What could I do but almost cry, laugh, notice the sky was getting light and think if I pack fast I can see sunrise on the water.