‘You’re like: who am I?’ Katie Chapman on the challenges and danger of football retirement

Katie Chapman on retiring: ‘It is because you’re searching for that adrenaline piece, that feeling that you got from competing, and we can all go different ways with that.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

“I loved competing,” says the former England international Katie Chapman. “I loved the adrenaline of it. That’s whatI missed, the adrenaline and addiction to competing. I spent years trying to find that feeling again.

“I ran a couple of marathons and I did all sorts of things trying to hunt that feeling down, but I had to get it into my mind that I’m never going to have that feeling again in the same way. I had to teach myself to say: ‘Listen, you’re not going to get that back, so stop trying to find it.’ Once I got there, then I could move myself forward.”