Noun
dead run
Coming as fast as one can, often in a harried state.
When she saw smoke coming from the kitchen, the old woman came in on the dead run to remove the burned loaf of bread from the oven.
Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run. Robert A. Heinlein
Bad, I thought, looking around me, that I'd accumulated so much. A man should never own more stuff than he can carry in his hands at a dead run. It was bad, but it had happened. Fredric Brown