chase the red line
v. phr.— «In swimming parlance, chasing the red line means going for a world record.» —“Phelps, team earn gold, U.S. record in 800 relay” by Kevin Van Valkenburg Baltimore Sun (Md.) July 30, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
After hearing our conversation about how dictionaries decide on a preferred pronunciation, and specifically about how to pronounce aioli, Vern from San Diego, California, wrote to say that a friend once made fun of him for pronouncing grimace with a...