For two days a year, for the past 86 years, geeks and jocks have been uniting in a battle of brains and brawn, guts and glory. It is called the Buggy races; and it goes down each spring in Pittsburgh, on the campus of Carnegie Mellon.

“Buggy is hard to understand, but so is yoga and acupuncture,” writes one participant Evan Stade. “And like these two ancient arts, buggy requires a focus and purity of mind that transcends the material plane.”

The whole year is spent prepping for the showdown: Engineering students are enlisted to tweak the missile-like machines to their full aerodynamic potential; the more meathead undergrads train daily for uphill “pusher” positions; and tiny, unsuspecting Asian females are recruited from the freshman class to be “drivers” -- a seemingly terrifying role that entails smooshing face-up into the six-foot buggy and steering it downhill at speeds up to 35mph.

Some tough-guy clubs, like Spirit, take the race very seriously -- bringing their buggy in by way of a U-Haul, with a crew of sunglass-clad bodyguards to protect it. Others, like KGB -- a-weird-and-proud-of-it secret society of nerds who, a couple years back, raced a coffin with wheels -- find humor in it all. Some crash and burn into the haystacks that are provided, to soften the blow. Others -- like Phi Kappa Alpha (PiKA), who won this year’s a couple weeks back -- do a slow-motion cheer with brooms raised high above their heads, having “swept away” the competition. Cue the Rocky soundtrack.

For more on the races, see their official site: andrew.cmu.edu/user/buggy