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1->''Everybody's gonna get a card like this. When you leave, you're gonna punch out here at this time clock. Three thousand miles roughly away from here is another time clock just like that at the Portofino Inn. The difference between the two times is your time across the country. The record stands at thirty-two hours and fifty-one minutes. Believe it or not, those guys did break the fifty-five mile an hour speed limit.''
2-->--Race organizer, ''Film/TheCannonballRun''
3
4A [[{{Plots}} stock plot]]: the characters have to proceed from a starting line to a finishing line under some set of rules over the course of an extended period of time -- often several days. This could be by car, by horse, by foot, or by any means necessary. Expect badasses of [[BadassDriver whatever]] [[ImprobablePilotingSkills types]] [[BadassBiker are]] [[{{Determinator}} appropriate]].
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6This may involve WackyRacing or it may not: the distinguishing characteristic of an Epic Race is the extreme length (generally 12 hours or more), not its idiosyncratic nature. An Epic Race is ''so long'' that the challenge of merely going that distance in the time adds interest, irrespective of anything else.
7
8Generally a subtrope of TheBigRace, for obvious reasons.
9----
10!Examples:
11
12%% Examples on this page have been alphabetized. Please insert new examples in the correct order.
13
14%% Zero-Context Examples are not allowed on Wiki pages. All such examples have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.
15
16[[foldercontrol]]
17
18[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
19* ''Anime/AppareRanman'': The premise of the story is a country race that spans from the starting line in Los Angeles to the finish line in New York City.
20* ''Anime/FutureGPXCyberFormula'' has two grandprix races established as the cross country events (Peruvian and Japanese GP). One video game adaptation features a spin-off event called "Extreme Speed" which is a massive on-road cross country race.
21* ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureSteelBallRun'', Part 7 of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'', features an extreme example, with a race across the USA starting in San Diego and ending in New York. Even without the bizarre plot involving [[FightingSpirit Stand battles]], the president of the USA, and [[spoiler:the mummified body parts of Jesus]], it's still an extraordinarily long and dangerous race which goes on for 116 days. Of the 3852 people said to have entered, only 39 make it to the finish line, and 88 participants lose their lives during the 6000 km race. It is almost entirely a horse race, with the exception of [[BadassNative Sandman]], who just decided to run it on foot.
22%%* ''Manga/OnePiece'' third film, ''Anime/DeadEndAdventure'', had this as the main plot with the Straw Hats getting involved in a boat race.
23* ''Anime/OutlawStar'' has the crew of the eponymous ship enter the Heifong Space Race in pursuit of the [=MacDougall=] Brothers. The race is said to cross a couple billion kilometers and the estimated time of completion is one thousand hours.
24%%* ''Anime/SpaceDandy'' also.
25%% * ''Anime/SpeedRacer'' and its various adaptations contains a number of epic races.
26[[/folder]]
27
28[[folder:Comic Books]]
29* Issue #5 of ''ComicBook/SteelgripStarkeyAndTheAllPurposePowerTool'' features an "Around-the-World Super Construction Race", combining both a footrace with feats of engineering.
30* In the ''Comicbook/SuskeEnWiske'' comic "Het Sprekende Testament" (The Speaking Testament), the heroes of the series race in a modified train that drives on (and off) the road.
31[[/folder]]
32
33[[folder:Fan Works]]
34* ''Fanfic/EarthAndSky'': Twilight Sparkle ends up testing her experimental flying harness against the Flim-Flam Brothers (AKA Professor Destiny and Doctor Insanity) and their rocket-powered flying rig in the Grand Pegathalon, an epic flying race that goes all around Equestria's borders. As the first non-pegasus entrants in the Pegathalon, they end up opening the gates for flying species from across Equestria and beyond (including griffins, a ''qilin'', and even [[{{Pun}} a winged buffalo]]) to compete.
35* ''Fanfic/NobledarkImperium'': The Iron Race is a cross-galactic racing competition held at irregular intervals by Craftworld Saim-Hann. Participants are chosen by invitation, but there are no particular requirements other than skill -- typically lineups include Craftworld Eldar, Humans, Kroot, Kabalites, Orkish Speed Freaks and more bizarre entrants still, and racers are permitted almost any kind of vehicle that they care to turn up in, which historically has included light battleships. The race itself winds in and through the Webway and across some of the most hazardous regions that the galaxy has to offer, including active warzones, Tyranid hive fleets, the event horizons of black holes and the edge of the Eye of Terror. Competitor casualties tend to be high, earning it the nickname of "the Suicide Race", and on at least a few occasions all of the competitors died before reaching the finish line.
36[[/folder]]
37
38[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
39* ''Film/BiteTheBullet'' tells of a 1906 horse race running seven hundred miles and a prize of two thousand dollars (in 1906 money).
40* A few inspired by the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash:
41** ''Film/{{Cannonball}}'', the first of the films to come out, starring Creator/DavidCarradine. This is also the only film inspired by the Cannonball not billed as a comedy.
42** ''Film/TheGumballRally'' came out shortly after ''Cannonball'', starring Michael Sarrazin and Creator/RaulJulia.
43** ''Film/TheCannonballRun'' was more directly based on the Cannonball, being written by the race's actual organizer. A sequel, ''Cannonball Run II'', followed a few years later with ''Speed Zone'', a semi-official sequel, coming a few years after that.
44* ''Film/DeathRace2000'' features the Transcontinental Road Race which acts as a BreadAndCircuses event to pacify the population of a totalitarian United States of the future. As the name suggests, it runs from one side of the country to the other, though the focus is more on running over pedestrians.
45* ''Film/DeathRace'', an InNameOnly remake of ''Death Race 2000''. In this case, it's a NASCAR-style track race where part of the goal is to kill the other racers. ''Death Race 3'' changes the race to a Baja 1000-inspired desert rally.
46* ''Film/TheGreatRace'', inspired by the 1908 New York to Paris race, has the protagonist and his arch rival competing in custom cars.
47* ''Film/{{Hidalgo}}'': VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory. The film centers around a 3,000 mile horse race across the Arabian desert. The raiders, kidnapped princess, and backstabbing among the competitors were not officially part of the deal.
48* The Disney movie ''Film/IronWill'' is about a dogsled race which runs over five hundred miles and lasts several days.
49* ''Film/ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' tells of a group of motorists who learn of a hidden treasure and try to get to it before the others. Transportation includes cars, planes, and even bicycles.
50%%* The El Dorado race from the climax of the 1969 version of ''Film/TheLoveBug''.
51%%** And the Paris-to-Monte Carlo race in the third film.
52* ''Film/MidnightMadness'' features five teams of college students taking part in an all-night puzzle hunt in Los Angeles.
53* ''Film/RatRace'' has a millionaire recruit a number of ordinary citizens to race from Las Vegas to New Mexico for two million dollars in cash. Meanwhile, the millionaire and his friends take bets on the racers. While mostly using automobiles, some of the participants take trains, helicopters, and even a hot air balloon.
54* ''Film/SmokeyAndTheBandit'' has Creator/BurtReynolds as a bootlegger who attempts to deliver a tractor trailer full of beer to a millionaire in a limited amount of time. Along the way, he has to match wits with an overenthusiastic sheriff.
55%%* The Casa Cristo 5000 from ''Film/SpeedRacer''.
56%%* ''Film/ThoseMagnificentMenInTheirFlyingMachines'' involves an airplane race.
57%%** ''Monte Carlo or Bust'' (aka ''Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies''), the sequel to ''Film/ThoseMagnificentMenInTheirFlyingMachines'', switched from planes to automobiles.
58* ''Film/TruthIn24'', a {{documentary}} about the Audi team in the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans, plays up this trope.
59* ''Film/TwoLaneBlacktop'' has a pair of street racers engage in a race against a wanderer from the American Southwest to Washington, D.C. [[spoiler:Both parties lose interest in the race and the film ends before we see who won.]]
60[[/folder]]
61
62[[folder:Literature]]
63* ''Literature/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays'' may be the TropeCodifier. The plot centers around a race against time as protagonist Phileas Fogg attempts to win an argument that the completion of an Indian railway section would make it possible to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. (This was in 1872.) Travel is mostly done by rail or boat.
64* Ian Watson's story "The Great Atlantic Swimming Race" (swimming past the whole Atlantic Ocean) has a satirical bent.
65* Creator/StephenKing, writing as Richard Bachman -- ''Literature/TheLongWalk''. It's a foot race run by 100 teenage boys, the so-called "walkers", with the following rules: if you drop below 4 miles an hour, you get a warning. Receiving 3 warnings in quick succession gets you killed. And as a final touch, it has no finish -- it lasts until there's only one surviving walker. It's written by Stephen King -- were you expecting a happy ending?
66* ''The Race'' by Creator/CliveCussler and Creator/JustinScott involves a cross-country airplane race in 1909. The series' main character, Isaac Bell, is assigned to protect the favorite to win from her estranged husband. [[spoiler:However, there is more to this than meets the eye.]]
67%%* Franchise/StarTrek novel ''The Great Starship Race''.
68[[/folder]]
69
70[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
71* ''Series/TheAmazingRace'' usually has the contestants racing around the world. Planes are the usual method of transportation between countries, but transportation within countries uses cars, buses, trains, rickshaws, foot, and many other methods.
72* ''Series/{{Curfew}}'' depicts a race across a dystopian United Kingdom that lasts all night, starting in London and finishing in Scotland.
73* ''Series/Drive2007'' depicted a cross-country road race with some rather shady organizers. Unfortunately, only [[CutShort six episodes were produced]] and the entrants only got as far as Cleveland (starting from Florida).
74%%* ''Series/IditarodTheToughestRaceOnEarth'' is a RealityShow about the real-life Iditarod Sled Dog Race.
75* The now-forgotten reality series ''Lost'' (no, not [[Series/{{Lost}} that one]]), in which contestants were dropped off in an unknown location somewhere in the world and had to find their way back home.
76%%* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', episode "Drive".
77%%* ''Series/StargateSG1'', episode "Space Race".
78* ''Series/TopGearUK'' does this a lot, mostly pitting a car against another form of transportation:
79** The first such race pitted an Aston Martin [=DB9=] against a pair of high speed trains running from the Top Gear studio in Surrey to a hotel in Monte Carlo. Jeremy even refers to the challenge as an epic race when introducing the segment, so he recognized this trope was in play.
80** The economy race from Basel, Switzerland to the Blackpool Illuminations took 17 hours. The presenters had to make the journey on one tank of gas, so it was a challenge of strategy as well as speed.
81** The race from Heathrow to a ski resort in Switzerland between a new Ferrari and a series of forms of public transportation. Notable for having one of the closest finishes on the series.
82** The race between a Mercedes-Benz and a cruise ship was their longest yet, running over 1300 miles and ending the day after it started.
83* NBC's ''Treasure Hunters'', which combined this trope with TreasureMap and lasted one season. Cars are normally used to move around, but two legs took place in Europe and planes were required to go there.
84[[/folder]]
85
86[[folder:Podcasts]]
87* The third segment of the ''Podcast/TwilightHistories'' episode “The Moon” is set in a world where the Space Race ended in a tie when America and the Soviet Union landed on the Moon at the same time in 1955. Since then, the two nations compete in a literal space race each year. The winner gets to determine lunar policy for the next lunar year.
88[[/folder]]
89
90[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
91* ''Polyhedron'' magazine issue 152 featured "The Thunderball Rally", a TabletopGame/D20Modern game set in 1976 which depicts a Mafia run road race from New York to the ''Queen Mary'' in Los Angeles.
92* On the future Mars of ''TabletopGame/TranshumanSpace: In the Well'', there's the Olympus Mons biathalon. You start by climbing the 15km-tall cliffs that make up the edge of the Olympus volcano -- with a bicycle on your back -- then you bike 300km to the caldera at the center.
93[[/folder]]
94
95[[folder:Video Games]]
96* ''VideoGame/TheCrew'' has a number of Faction Missions involving these. The longest of these, "Frontier Tour", lasts between three and four hours. Hopefully, your controller is fully charged.
97* The endurance races from the ''VideoGame/GranTurismo'' series which have been getting longer as the series progresses. The fourth and fifth games even have races lasting a full twenty-four hours.
98* ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeedTheRun'' has the protagonist competing in a race across the country to settle a debt with the mob.
99* Sega's ''VideoGame/RadMobile'' is the first-person ''Outrun''/''Rad Racers'' inspired game that invoke racing across multiple locations from western to eastern United States of America.
100[[/folder]]
101
102[[folder:Web Video]]
103* ''WebVideo/JetLagTheGame'': Season two's challenge was to be the first pair to circumnavigate the globe. To this end, each team was given a travel budget insufficient to cover all necessary flights, but allowed it to be replenished by completing designated challenges. To prevent a team from completing all their challenges in one spot, tasks completed in the same city saw diminishing returns.
104[[/folder]]
105
106[[folder:Western Animation]]
107* The ''WesternAnimation/AlvinAndTheChipmunks'' [[TheMovie film]], ''WesternAnimation/TheChipmunkAdventure'', had this as their main plot. The Chipmunks and the Chipettes had to race around the world in hot air balloons, dropping off and collecting dolls. Unbeknownst to both parties, they're being used as {{Unwitting Pawn}}s in a gem-smuggling ring.
108* ''Tom Slick'' from the classic ''WesternAnimation/GeorgeOfTheJungle'' once raced Baron Otto Matic from St. Louis to New York. The Baron cheats by giving Slick a map that sends him to California instead.
109%%* ''WesternAnimation/ObanStarRacers'': The show's premise.
110* ''WesternAnimation/{{Peanuts}}'':
111** ''WesternAnimation/WhatANightmareCharlieBrown'' has Snoopy dreaming he's an Arctic sled dog in a long-distance mush race.
112** ''WesternAnimation/RaceForYourLifeCharlieBrown'' involves the kids in a whitewater-rafting race that spans a couple days and nights.
113* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb: [[VerySpecialEpisode Summer Belongs to You!]]'' has the title characters attempt to circumnavigate the world on the summer solstice. FinaglesLaw bites ''hard''.
114* ''WesternAnimation/TurboTeen'' had an episode where the heroes have to transport a witness to a trial in New York through a cross-country road race called The Daredevil Run. The other racers leave them alone, but they have to contend with the defendant's enforcers and recurring villain The Dark Rider.
115%%* ''WesternAnimation/YogisSpaceRace''.
116[[/folder]]
117
118[[folder:Real Life]]
119* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baja_1000 Baja 1000,]] an off-road race on Mexico's Baja Peninsula where the 1000 refers to the usual distance in miles. Finishing times over twelve hours are not unheard of. Special mention must go to the 2000 running which ran twice as long and both winners (in two-wheel and four-wheel classes) clocked in at over thirty hours.
120* Numerous cross-country races:
121** The Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash was run a few times in UsefulNotes/TheSeventies, started as a protest against the then forthcoming fifty-five mile-an-hour national speed limit. The race normally ran from New York City to Los Angeles. Inspired a few movies, including ''Film/TheCannonballRun.''
122** The 2904 could be considered the Cannonball meets the 24 Hours of Lemons. The 2904 in the name refers to both the distance from start to finish (New York to San Francisco) and the limit of how much the teams could spend. Said limit includes not just gas, meals, and speeding tickets, but also the car itself.
123** The [=C2C=] Express followed the same route as the Cannonball, New York to Los Angeles. The race imposed a three thousand dollar limit on cars as well as a restriction to cars made before 1980.
124%%* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-Challenge Eco-Challenge]] marathon (1995-2002).
125* Endurance races such as 24 Heures du Mans, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
126** Also, parodies such as [[http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/ The 24 Hours of LeMons,]] where each car must cost $500 or less, including both purchase cost and cost of any repairs/enhancements! [[note]]Cooking the books isn't a great idea because the [[MyRuleFuIsStrongerThanYours administration can choose to buy your car for $500.]][[/note]]
127* The sport of endurance riding, which involves trekking great distances on horseback. In older times, these races could be cross-country. Nowadays, most national events are between 50 and 100 miles, which can be completed in about 12 hours by the winners. The rides are divided into different legs, with health checks for the horses and riders before they're cleared to continue the competition.
128* Giro d'Italia is a bicycle race usually held in Italy, but has been known to run through and sometimes even start in other countries. The race is usually held over twenty-one stages over a course of twenty-three or twenty-four days.
129* The 1925 serum run to Nome, also known as the "Great Race of Mercy," was not a race against other competitors, but a race against nature itself -- twenty mushers and over a hundred and fifty dogs undertook a 674-mile journey in blizzard conditions to save Nome, Alaska from a diphtheria epidemic after aircraft proved unusable. The serum arrived in five and a half days, a feat that has never been duplicated. The Iditarod, a 1150-mile dogsled race, is a commemoration of this last great hurrah and [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Crowning Moment of Awesome]] of dog-sledding.
130* The 1908 New York to Paris race, as indicated by the name, ran across three continents (North America, Asia, and Europe). Six cars started out from New York on February 12, 1908. The first of three finishers entered Paris on July 26 of the same year.
131* The Peking to Paris race was originally run in 1907, starting from Peking (today known as Beijing) and finishing in Paris. The race covered a distance of just over nine thousand miles and lasted two months. [[note]] Started on June 10 and the winner finished on August 10. [[/note]]
132* The Paris-Dakar Rally (since 2007 it is only known as the Dakar rally due to changing routes), of course.
133* The UsefulNotes/TourDeFrance, a 3500-km bicycle race.
134%%* Ultramarathons, particularly those that exceed 100 miles.
135* Vuelta a España is a bicycle race around Spain normally lasting twenty-three days. (Two of those are rest days.) The ''shortest'' edition was the 1963 race which covered 2,419 kilometers.
136[[/folder]]

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