A Military Couple is Paying it Forward to Their Community by Running the Boston Marathon on Team USO

By Tess Fegan

Building a family is an exciting but challenging journey. For many, it’s a path of falling in love, getting married, buying a first home and having kids — each step bringing growth and new responsibilities. It’s a rollercoaster of joy, struggle and triumph as young families balance their dreams, careers and raising children. It can be a wild ride, but it’s all worth it.

But what does this life look like when your partner joins the military?

Like many military couples, Alyssa and Josh have experienced the ups and downs of military life since he joined the U.S. Army in 2017. | Photo credit Courtesy Photo

For Alyssa and Joshua Hill, this journey started officially in 2017 when Josh joined the U.S. Army. Their lives have been – and continue to be – filled with long nights, tough decisions, the birth of their four children and countless video chats from different time zones. If you ask either of them, they’ll tell you that it’s all been worth it.

Their attitude: ‘If not us, then who?’

This is why both Alyssa and Josh will be running in the 129th Boston Marathon as a part of Team USO on Monday, April 21st, 2025. One mile at a time, they are hoping to be the example that can unify military families around the world.

A Couple’s Love of Running

“During Ranger School, from October 2021 to March 2022, we had six months of no contact,” Alyssa recalled “[Josh] had a four-day pass to come home for the birth of our third baby, but he missed the first two months of her life. We only communicated through letters. That was hard on us – I had three kids all under three at home.”

Even with the grueling time apart, Josh and Alyssa still made time for an activity they both loved: running. During Ranger School, Josh came home on a two-week holiday pass in December 2021, where he found out he had been signed up to run a race during his downtime with Alyssa. She was 39 weeks pregnant at the time, and so Josh was tasked with pushing their other two children in a stroller as both he and Alyssa ran the race.

At 39 weeks pregnant, Alyssa had her husband and two eldest children join her in a family race - with Josh taking on the challenge of pushing both kids in a stroller. | Photo credit Courtesy Photo

Alyssa’s love of running started around the same time Josh and Alyssa started dating in middle school. Running together became a way to spend time together.

“Josh and I would meet in the middle. We grew up in Georgia, living 3 miles apart. We’d meet in the middle and run together” Alyssa said. “Recently, he’s been running more, and farther.”

During one of Josh’s holiday leaves from the Army, Alyssa had the opportunity to participate in the “Run Across Georgia” race. She ran 34 miles in only two days. And just as Alyssa supports Josh in his dreams, so too does Josh support Alyssa’s. Josh and their children were ready to cheer on Alyssa every step of the way.

“We switched roles, and Josh stayed home with the kids while I got to disappear!” Alyssa laughed.

This April 2025, the couple will be running a new race together: the Boston Marathon. They attribute their connectedness and the ability to prepare for one of the “World Major Marathons” – a series of prestigious marathons – in part because of the USO.

A Family’s Passion for the USO

While Josh was deployed, the USO not only became a place for respite, it also gave Josh an opportunity to connect with his family back home. | Photo credit USO Photo

While Josh was on his second deployment with the Army, the USO offered various morale-boosting activities such as 5k fun runs, football watch parties and homemade stationery for service members to write home on. While these might seem like relatively simple activities, when deployed to the front lines with limited resources, and far from your loved ones and home, they can make all the difference in the lives of our nation’s service members. Alyssa and Josh rely on these opportunities to help strengthen their family bond by keeping them all connected during the months apart.

“The USO has been a lifesaver for our family. Josh recorded bedtime stories through the USO Reading Program for our daughter while he was deployed to Afghanistan,” said Alyssa.

The USO Reading Program is one of the USO’s most popular activities for service members who are deployed. Through this long-standing USO program, service members can record themselves reading a book for a son, daughter, sibling or any other child in their life. Then, the USO has that recording and a copy of the book sent home to the child, ensuring that their service member is part of story time, even from the other side of the world. Having this slight sense of normalcy can help military families feel connected, even when thousands of miles apart.

During Josh’s second deployment, he and Alyssa fell into a routine that allowed them to keep some semblance of normalcy as well. Josh learned the importance of understanding the schedule of his family’s life back home and adjusting his schedule to meet the needs of his wife and children.

At 4:30 a.m. every morning, he would call Alyssa to talk about each other’s days and life in general. At home, this was bedtime for the kids, which meant Alyssa would have time to talk without any interruptions. Again, around midday in Eastern Europe, he’d call to talk to the kids as they were eating breakfast and getting ready for school. With the seven-hour time difference, these were guaranteed times he’d be able to connect with his family.

Even with his daily responsibilities on the front lines, the challenges of being in a different time zone and staying in touch with his family, Josh still found time to train to be part of Team USO at the Boston Marathon.

“I was able to find a group of service members in my unit who also shared a passion for running, and we would schedule long runs and workouts together,” Josh recalled. “The biggest difference now is readjusting to not running on Polish country dirt roads to running on asphalt!”

By running the Boston Marathon together, Josh and Alyssa are giving back to their own military community, helping support a mission that is committed to standing by the people who serve through every step of their military journey.

You can help Alyssa, Josh and other runners on Team USO reach their Boston Marathon goals by visiting their fundraising page.