I'm a pretty extreme whitewater kayaker and consider myself to be an extreme athlete in this field. It's an incredibly niche sport.

The vast majority of people who go kayaking, go on a lake or in a river where it’s completely flat and safe.

But I'm out here putting on elbow pads, helmets and lifejackets. I’ve sliced open my hands on rocks and broken bones. I go off waterfalls and if I make a mistake, things can take a turn for the worse really quickly.

There's a level of extreme paddler that's well beyond where I'm at – you see these videos of Dane Jackson or Nouria Newman going off absolutely insanely high waterfalls and doing crazy, hard rapids on Red Bull TV.

They're amazing people, they're amazing athletes. There's only a few people in the world who can actually make a living out of doing this because one, it's such a tiny sport and two, there's only so many people paying for it.

I wouldn’t put myself in their class of paddler. I’m in the next class of not quite as extreme paddlers. And, as I'm going through transition, HRT is having an effect on my strength and I'm having to face new challenges.

I've never been the fastest paddler, or the strongest, but I've always been solid -- I could paddle literally for eight hours straight in a day with no problem. And this summer, all of a sudden, I couldn't.

I'd get done with two relatively short, easy runs, and I'd have nothing left. My arms would feel like spaghetti, and it’s been a challenge to see how hormones are impacting my strength.

Even though I didn't think I was relying on my strength to be a good paddler, I'm having to readjust and replan. This winter, for the first time in my life, I need a weight training routine to maintain the type of skill and strength necessary for the type of runs I want.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued..]