Carrington was struggling to explain her emotions immediately after the race, but she was still on a high.
"It's huge. It's not necessarily the race I'm feeling. It's all the work I've put in, the amazing journey I've had so far. It's true joy."
Carrington's historic Olympic kayaking deeds are a massive boost for the sport, Canoe Racing New Zealand boss Mark Weatherall believes.
Carrington is the first New Zealand woman to win two Olympic medals at the same games.
With a gold in London four years ago, she also joined boardsailor Barbara Kendall (gold in 1992, silver in 1996 and bronze in 2000) and shot putter Val Adams (gold in 2008 and 2012 and silver in Rio) as New Zealand's most successful female Olympian.
Weatherall thinks Carrington deserves to sit alongside Olympic giants like Peter Snell, fellow kayakers Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald and swimmer Danyon Loader after her inspiring deeds.
"Lisa's gold medal in London four years ago created a huge surge in the number of female paddlers in New Zealand and there's no reason to believe that won't happen again," Weatherall said.
"We've already seeing the fruits of that surge, both at senior level and with our top juniors, which makes the next four years heading into Tokyo 2020 incredibly exciting."
Carrington revealed four successive days of top-flight competition - comprising six races - had been taxing, mentally as much as physically. Coming down from the high of gold was the hardest challenge.
"There's a lot of contrast of emotions and feelings and nerves," she said. "To just line up (for the K1 500m), I'm personally going to be proud of that.
"And it was a tough race. It was pure determination in the end and just trying harder and harder to squeeze everything out that I had."