Courtney Dauwalter has fallen roughly 50 minutes behind the leader of the Cocodona 250 after going off course on the first night of the 2026 race, according to French ultrarunning publication u-trail.com.
Dauwalter, one of the most decorated names in the sport, started the race on Monday at 5 a.m. local time alongside the rest of the field. She was running with Heather Jackson, who sat in third among the women, when both runners missed the route on the descent toward Prescott. The error happened just before the Whiskey Row aid station at mile 75.8 (km 120).
Jackson added about a mile of extra running before correcting course. Dauwalter went further off route, covering up to five additional miles before finding her way back to the markings, according to the same report. On a race that stretches more than 250 miles, those unplanned miles cost time, calories and rhythm.
Mistakes of this kind are not unusual at Cocodona. Course markings can be sparse on long mountain sections, and most runners rely on a GPS track to stay on route. A single wrong call at a junction, especially in the dark, can pull a runner several minutes off the back of the leaders. Dauwalter has weathered course confusion before, including a recent race in Tuscany where she went off course and still won.
While Dauwalter and Jackson were retracing their steps, Rachel Entrekin took clear control of the race. The two-time defending champion moved into the overall lead, ahead of every man and woman in the field, after about 90 miles of racing. Entrekin came into this year’s race with a real shot at becoming the first woman to win Cocodona outright. Kilian Korth and Joe McConaughy were running together behind her in the chase, u-trail.com reported.
The detour adds another rough chapter for Dauwalter at this race. She dropped out of the 2025 edition at mile 108 after leading much of it, and she returned to Arizona this year looking for a 250-mile victory she has not yet added to her record.
The Cocodona 250 covers more than 250 miles across Arizona’s high desert and mountain country, with roughly 39,000 feet of climbing. Runners deal with days of broken sleep, swings between heat and altitude, and long stretches between aid stations. After 16 and a half hours of racing, the leaders had already covered close to 150 kilometers, but the bulk of the course was still in front of them. For readers new to the format, our guide to ultrarunning covers the basics.
Five extra miles this early in a 250-mile race is not, on its own, a knockout blow. Plenty of time remains for the order at the front to shift. Even so, the wasted effort burns energy Dauwalter cannot easily replace, and it eats into reserves she will need over the next several nights.
Entrekin, for her part, has not put a foot wrong so far. She moved cleanly to the front and is setting a pace nobody in the field has matched.
