According to "Your Time Starts Now" by Dr. Vijay Agrawal, it seems that "Race against the time" is a well established motto.
Today 'Race against the time' is the motto of success and the
parameter of ability. The expertise of a reporter is evaluated on the
basis of getting such a news item first, 'Maharashtra's chief
minister has been asked to submit his resignation.'
In that book, however, the author also uses "run against the time", whose meaning is perfectly understandable but it doesn't appear so common in the English language, at least in written texts.
So, my question is, are "Race against the time" or "Running against the time" well established mottoes?
For what is worth, a quick searching on Google shows that one can run against "the clock", rather than against "the time". Nevertheless, how can the clock version and the time version lead to different interpretations? What are the reason why one should be preferred on the other, if any?
Best Answer
While "race against the time" isn't a particularly common idiom as far as I know, and it sounds strange to me, there is a very similar phrase that is common, which is "a race against time" (without the "the").
The FreeDictionary, borrowing from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, defines it as:
Which seems to mean what you want.