Using Exposure Compensation

I typically shoot in manual mode, so I never appreciated the usefulness of the exposure compensation button. But shooting photos of my sister at her first triathlon opened my eyes. When she ran across the finish line, the sun was high and beat down on everything. This caused dark shadows to fall across my sister's face. She was running very fast, so I had to give up shooting manually and turned instead to shutter priority mode. Her face was too dark, because the ambient light was so bright. Since I was in shutter priority mode, I couldn't directly open up the aperture and I didn't want to increase the ISO, when I realized, why not increase the exposure by one stop using the exposure compensation button? This of course caused everything in the scene not in shadows to become overexposed. But my main goal was to illuminate her face, in order for the photos to convey what she felt after 3+ hours of complete exertion in 98 degree heat. So the exposure compensation button, though small and obscure, can still serve a purpose! Photo info: Shutter priority, 52.5mm focal length, f/4 (with +1 exp comp), 1/1000 sec, ISO 200, no flash, 12:18pm. So why not use a flash to light her face? 1. I didn't want to distract her. 2. I don't like on-axis flash, so I would have had to hold the flash in my right hand, which is difficult to aim while sprinting alongside her. Here's proof that I suck at this.