Boston marathoner originally from Brilliant

HALEYVILLE — When Haleyville resident Alissa Hood started running seven years ago, she only wanted to run three miles. Now, she has logged hundreds of miles and traveled the world, all one step and one dream at a time, inspiring her community all at the same time.
Hood’s journey has taken her from the track at the Thornhill Community Center in Haleyville to successfully finishing the New York, Chicago and Boston marathons, just to name a few, as well as marathons in England, Germany and Japan. Hood has come a long way from her high school days at Brilliant, where she was on the track team, but did not enjoy running.
“I tried to do the bare minimum. I tried to do the high jump, the long jump, anything I could do to keep from running because I didn’t like running,” Hood said with a laugh.
Despite her distaste for running in high school, she did find herself drawn to it.
“I always wanted to be a runner. I thought it was so cool to be able to say that you’re a runner,” Hood said, “but I didn’t like running.”
After high school, Hood went to college, earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing and becoming a certified nurse practitioner. She married Kevin Hood, and they had three children. Alissa is a certified nurse practitioner at Haleyville Pediatrics.
Like many women who are leading busy lives with full careers and families, Alissa had to make time for herself. That’s when she began running.
“I would get the kids ready for bed, then I would go to the track. That was my time to myself,” Alissa said.
At first, she set a goal of running three miles. She started her journey in Thornhill at the community center.
“I would run a lap, then walk a lap, run a lap, then walk a lap,” she recalled. “Then, I got to where I could run two laps, then walk a lap. I would do that every night.”
Alissa also joined a local running group, which provided her with a tremendous support base.
“They were running five miles, so I would run five miles. Then, they would run 10 miles, and I would wonder if I could do that. I was curious if I could do it. I had never even thought about running that far,” Alissa said.
Alissa began using an app that allowed her to follow runners in the area and look at their times. She would look at how long it took them to run a certain length, then set herself a goal to see if she could do the same thing or even beat their times.
As she trained and ran for longer distances, she had full support from her family and friends, as well as her running group.
“You will never find people who are more supportive than runners. They don’t care who you are. If you are a runner, you can join them,” Alissa said. “You never meet a stranger when you are running.”
Alissa ran her first half-marathon the same year she began running. At 13.1 miles, the Life Without Limits Half-Marathon in Florence made Alissa nervous, but she was told by fellow runners to just have fun.
“I really didn’t know what I was doing. People told me to not worry about a time, to just run it for fun,” Alissa said.
Alissa’s competitive streak couldn’t help but kick in after she saw she had run the first half of the race in less than an hour, especially knowing most runners like to finish half-marathons in less than two hours.
“I thought, ‘I could break two hours!’ Then I put the pressure on myself,” Alissa said with a laugh.
The second half of the race was harder than the first, however. Alissa finished it in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 58 seconds. This spurred Alissa into setting a goal of running a marathon, not just any marathon, but the iconic New York Marathon.
“I put in for the lottery, and I got in,” she said with a laugh. She found out a year in advance so she would have plenty of time to train for it, which is good, because training for a marathon, which is 26.2188 miles, is different.
“It’s mainly long runs (16-18 miles) on weekends and you have to take in nutrition (while running). That’s the only difference. You have to practice because it’s a long time, and you run out of energy,” Alissa said.
“After a half-marathon, you can still do your normal activities afterward, and you aren’t really that tired. For a marathon, there are days where you are laying around on the couch all day because you are so tired, especially that first year, because I wasn’t used to it. The more you run, the easier it gets,” Alissa said.
Alissa went to New York City to run the marathon in 2018. It was very hard.
“I was thinking, I want to quit. It’s a hilly race, and it was hard,” Hood said.
She told herself she had come too far to quit and completed it, however, with a time of 4:31:16.
“When it was over, I thought, I will never do this again,” Alissa said.  
Then, the fun really began. Exhausted, Alissa had to walk a mile to get out of the park where the race took place.
“I was so tired. There was this man walking beside me. He asked if it was my first marathon, and I said yes and I’ll never do another one. He said never say never and offered me a ride,” Alissa said, laughing. “I hitchhiked in New York! I was so tired!”
Alissa kept her husband in the loop via text during her car ride, then made it back to the hotel and even made it to “The Lion King” on Broadway in time for the 6 p.m. curtain, so it all turned out just fine.
Once she was back home and recovered, Alissa decided to put in for another marathon, this time in Chicago. Again, she didn’t expect to get it and, again, she did.
“It’s just luck. I don’t know how I got so lucky,” Alissa said.
She ran it in 2019, finishing with a time of 3:38.51.
Hood also put in for the most iconic of American marathons - the Boston Marathon.
“I had run a half-marathon in Tuscaloosa in March and ran a good time. I used an app and would plug in my times to see what my predicted time would be. I was reading books and studying because I really didn’t know what I was doing. When I plugged that time in, it told me I was only three minutes away from the qualifying time for Boston,” Alissa said.
Through study, Alissa had learned she could do a six-month training and improve her run time by 3-4 percent, which would get her in for Boston. As she studied, she also decided to not tell anyone that she was training for the Boston Marathon.
“I didn’t tell anyone that I wanted to qualify. I had doubts,” Alissa said.
All her training and studying paid off and she qualified.
“I qualified by a minute and eight seconds. That was my goal, to qualify and prove that I can do it,” Alissa said.
Then COVID hit.
The world closed down and marathons were cancelled. Alissa continued to see her patients, and she continued to run and train, following a training plan on the Boston Marathon website. As the world opened back up in 2021, she found a smaller marathon in Greenville, S.C., and ran her fastest time yet, 3:31:-05, well under the 3:40 qualifying time for the Boston Marathon, and well under the time needed to get in. She ran the iconic race in October, 2021.
“It had never been run in October before. It was very hard because it’s downhill for at least half of it, then uphill after that,” Alissa said. She completed Boston in 4:12:31.
The Boston Marathon is the only one where Alissa said she went to bed after completing it and didn’t get up the next day. Part of why she was so tired may have been because she had the opportunity to visit Fenway Park across from her hotel and cheer on the Red Sox to an 11-inning victory the night before the race.
After running Boston, Alissa noticed one of her running friends from Guin had run the Berlin Marathon in Germany. This got her thinking internationally.
“I put in for London and for Berlin in 2022. I didn’t get in to London, but I got in to Berlin,” Alissa said.
A seasoned veteran of marathons at this point, Alissa was able to put in for London…