Instead of a PR at the Rock ’n’ Roll Raleigh Marathon on Sunday, Heidi Bretscher came away with a hilly two-mile detour, frantic conversations with race officials, cramping muscles, and a ride in two different police cars.

She still won.

On a winding path in thick woods at mile 19, the 28-year-old and two lead pace bikes missed a sharp left turn with unclear markings. As first reported on the blog Raleigh & Company, Bretscher kept running for two miles, asking the cyclists multiple times if they were headed in the right direction.

“When I realized we were off the course, I didn’t know what to do so I kept running as fast as I could, thinking if I got out of the woods I could find the course,” Bretscher told Runner’s World Newswire.

Frustrated and lost, she found a police officer. For 15 minutes she pleaded with him to give her a ride back to the course. As he radioed other officers to get permission, Bretscher ran in place to stay loose. The officer drove her to an aid station back at mile 17.

Before making the wrong turn, Bretscher was in third overall, nearly 30 minutes ahead of the second-place female. She was on pace to crush her 2:49:45 PR, which she hit at the same event last year (along with a first-place finish among all women).

Back at the aid station she had passed almost 30 minutes earlier, Bretscher said she could see masses of people streaming by. “I had already run all these miles so I didn’t want to start up again all the way back there,” she said.

Race officials allowed another police officer to take her up the road to mile 22.5. Along the way, she could hear radio chatter announcing that the first two males had crossed the line.

“At that moment, I was really frustrated because I knew I should have been only about five minutes away from the finish line,” she said.

She hopped out of the car and started running again. She had no idea where any of the other female runners were, but she started passing people through the last three miles.

At the finish line she broke the tape, but instead of feeling jubilant, she was nervous—afraid race officials would be upset with her detour.

Online results show Bretscher coming in first with a time of 3:06:59. The section for the 20-mile checkpoint is blank because she never passed the sensors.

After going through the chute, local media outlets asked her how the race went. “No one seemed to understand what just happened,” she said.

As soon as officials from the Competitor Group, the company that organizes the Rock ’n’ Roll series, got word of what happened they called her into a tent where she spoke on the phone with Tracy Sundlun, a senior vice president with the company. He decided to award her the win because her lead was so large when she veered off course.

“What went into that decision was, she was a half hour ahead of the next woman, and the distance that she ran off course, combined with her running in place while waiting, was definitely in the 26.2 mile range,” Dan Cruz, Competitor’s head of communications, told Newswire.

According to Cruz, the race’s lead motorcycle alerted officials that markings near mile 19 were confusing, but the course wasn’t corrected until after Bretscher passed the area. The route was changed from 2014 to minimize road closures.

“We want to treat our runners the best,” Cruz said. “They expect a well marked and accurate course. We dropped the ball, but wanted to make things right.”

To make up for the ordeal, the company offered her a free trip to another Rock ’n’ Roll event.

“When they told me that, I asked if I could go to Rock ’n’ Roll Hawaii,” she joked.

Unfortunately, that race doesn’t exist.

Kit Fox Special Projects Editor Kit has been a health, fitness, and running journalist for the past five years.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io