ISU-1GP takes the object designed to keep an office worker near a desk and sends it around a street for two hours. The Japan Office Chair Racing Association supervises the endurance format: competitors propel wheeled office chairs with their feet, and the winning team is the one that completes the most laps. No motor converts effort into distance. The chair's tiny casters, low seat, and swiveling body become the entire vehicle.

The event began in 2010 in the Kirara shopping district of Kyotanabe, Kyoto Prefecture. Its official site says races have since been held in more than twenty locations across Japan. Organizers use paved roads associated with shopping streets, temporarily giving familiar commercial blocks the rhythm of a miniature endurance circuit.

Course details can vary. At the 2019 Hanyu race reported by the Japan Times, teams of three circled a 200-metre route. That specific measurement is evidence from one event, not a universal rule for every ISU-1GP. The durable format is simpler and stranger: keep a standard workplace seat moving under foot power, negotiate its swivel and small wheels, and accumulate laps for two hours. An office chair normally makes distance disappear by rolling a person a few feet without standing. Here, those same conveniences become the limits of a street-racing machine.