Remember when Team IBM had its own jerseys and Triangle tech behemoths took corporate competition to the streets by contending in road races?

To celebrate a new Racery feature that allows teams to use real miles to race against each other on a digital route, we’re excited to revive this tradition by taking the corporate challenge into the digital age!

Racery is staging a race between teams from tech companies in the Triangle area of North Carolina. The Triangle Tech Challenge will cover a 1,077-mile loop on a digital route around North Carolina, with mileage from up to four racers contributing to each team’s tally. Here’s the link: http://tsf-hl.racery.com/r/triangle-tech-challenge/

So far, 13 teams have entered. We’re betting that 20 or more teams will be lined up at the digital starting line by the time the starting gun sounds.

[Update 7/31/15: the race started with 37 teams and today there are 40. Final registration for teams will be 8/03. Many companies – SAS, Bandwidth, Adzerk, Newfangled, Netsertive, Redhat, ChannelAdvisor, Bronto and WindsorCircle – have multiple teams racing.

Update 7/19/15: The race is now set to start Thursday 7/21, and we’ve got 21 teams registered. Teams represent companies ranging from behemoths like Redhat, Broadband and IBM to start-ups like Adzerk, AdBiblio, Windsor Circle and Adwerx.]

The route is laid out on a digital map. But make no mistake – the miles, sweat, adrenaline and glory are very real. Participants in races put on by running stores to nursing schools to food coops will tell you that a sweltering competition is coming – both to top the leader board for individual racers and the team leader board.

Battling the likes of Team Glaxo, IBM runners had their own jerseys back in the day… and occasional photo ops with running celebrities like marathon god Bill Rodgers. (Photo by Ben Dillon)

This isn’t your uncle’s road race.

• At a time when some half marathons cost as much as $150 (!), the Triangle Tech Challenge costs nothing. (Thank you sponsors The Startup Factory and HutchLaw!)
• And racers don’t need to crawl out of bed at 4 am to make it to the starting line – just cover your normal daily mileage on your neighborhood route or favorite forest trail and submit those miles.
• And racers need not fiddle with apps or gadgets or passwords – all mileage is submitted by e-mail.
• There’s one other major difference between this race and most others you’ve experienced, perhaps the most important. The race welcomes a far broader range of skill levels. The winners won’t necessarily be the team with the fastest crew, at least in a miles-per-hour sense. The winner will cover the most miles per day and per week.

The winner will be the team with the most persistent and durable athletes. By coincidence, that’s what it takes to make a winning tech company, right?

[It’s not too late to enter a team or join your tech company’s existing team(s)… here’s the form. And for more context, here’s the front page of Racery.com.]