Beat me to doing?

I always hear:

You beat me to it.

as a fixed expression. However, is it correct to use a verb instead of "it", e.g.:

You beat me to replying to the email.

?

Solution 1:

Grammatically, yes. In terms of proper usage, not really. It's almost always used in the context of "you beat me to it".

Solution 2:

According to Ngram

Cases of "you beat me to it" constitutes more than half of the cases of "you beat me to", but there are still a lot of other cases.
You beat me to the punch
You beat me to her
Tim's older cousins usually beat him to the best parts of the turkey, but this year he got first pick.

See The Free Dictionary

Solution 3:

"You beat me to it." is a contextual response that implies agreement with an answer previously stated to an open question or query. An example would be: An audience member asks a 4 person panel a question. They receive an answer from panelist #1. Panelist #2 starts out by exclaiming to panelist #1, "You beat me to it." This indicates their general agreement & support for panelist #1's answer.

Other uses could be in a race, or contest, where someone comes in after a friend or competitor. Then, "You beat me to it." implies being second to a shared goal.

So, yes. it is okay to include the shared goal in your response. "You beat me to the answer I was going to give." and, "You beat me to the finish line." are very acceptable alternatives.