Just because Steph LeClair and Kristen McKenzie waited until the last minute to audition for The Amazing Race Canada doesn’t mean you should. With the deadline for submissions happening on Thursday, Dec. 1, the pair dispensed valuable hints to improve your odds of being selected for Season 5.

It’s been two months since Canada watched the couple best Jillian and Emmett and Joel and Ashley during the final leg in Montreal and a lot has changed. They quit their jobs, have hiked part of the Appalachian Trail, were grand marshals at the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest Thanksgiving Day parade (where they met Prime Minister Trudeau) and are embarking on a two-week trip to Costa Rica. Upcoming jaunts include New York City in December followed by Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Thailand early in 2017. (The Big Apple and the Down Under are both trips the pair captured by winning Legs.)

But where the girls have their next year or so plotted, they were anything but coordinated when it came to auditioning for Season 4.

“We hemmed and hawed and waited until the last minute,” Kristen admits. “We thought, ‘What’s the point? We’re never going to get picked.'” With just one night available to film their audition, the couple—after returning home from dinner out and imbibing in some wine—plopped down on their apartment floor and talked to the camera.

“It literally took us just a couple of hours,” Steph says. “The clip is only three minutes, so leave some bloopers in and show your personality. It doesn’t have to be perfect or include graphics or anything. Don’t overthink it.” That latter note, overthinking it, plagued the duo at first. A list of recorded bullet point items came off as too scripted and robotic, so they had a conversation, chirping good-naturedly.

“Once we said, ‘To hell with it,’ we had fun and were ourselves,” Kristen says. That included disclosing they were in a relationship, a unique angle producers look for in casting.

If you are lucky enough to be chosen, the real work begins. But even then, it’s almost impossible to know exactly what to prepare for when challenges and countries visited is such a wild card. Still, there are some general things to work on before the five-week adventure begins. Steph and Kristen worked out, ran up and down their condo building’s stairs wearing weighted knapsacks, boosting the stamina needed not only to outlast other teams physically but strengthen their mental game too.

“People ask why we didn’t learn specific things, but things happen so quickly once you’re selected for the Race,” Kristen says. “You have five weeks to prepare while juggling work and life and everything gets crammed in.”

“I suck at maps and I knew I was going to be the navigator, so I was asking my sister at the last minute how to read a road map,” Steph says with a laugh. “And despite being able to do it and winning The Amazing Race Canada I still get us lost.”

The deadline for submission is Thursday, Dec. 1, at 11:59 PM ET. For all casting details and updates, including instructions on how to submit an audition video, fans can visit CTV.ca/TheAmazingRaceCanada, the CTV Facebook page, and follow @AmazingRaceCDA.

Image courtesy of Bell Media.