Pack your bags, because The Amazing Race is back for its 30th season! Every week, Parade’s Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the team most recently eliminated from the race.

“Brains over brawn.” We’ve seen times in Amazing Race history before when the smart surprisingly surpass the strong. Self-professed “hippies” have defeated fraternity brothers who still spot the best average placement in the show’s history. Goat farmers (not to be confused with goat yoga teachers) have stripped Chippendales dancers of a win. Candy scientists have clotheslined professional wrestlers. Like all the previous examples, though their competition looked physically intimidating, dating recent Yale graduates Henry Zhang and Evan Lynyak were hopeful their brain power and debate skills would provide a good argument as to why they deserved to win the million dollar prize. Though they ultimately finished as the runners-up, they proved they could push through the most trying tasks and stand toe-to-toe with the best of them.

Henry and Evan started The Amazing Race with the typical level of preparation and meticulousness you would expect from Ivy League alums. They hoped to approach the race analytically, but their expectations soon went down like a spoonful of brennivin when Henry got quickly passed at the first Roadblock by Cody Nickson. They were able to finish in third and stayed in the top of the pack as they ran through the streets of Belgium. But Henry and Evan were soon to face their Achilles heel: the Head-to-Head. They arrived at the new task in second place, but their lack of upper body strength compounded with their mounting exhaustion had them lose a whopping seven matches in a row. Now “spuddenly” hitting a low point with the frites race, they vowed they would rally, and made good on that promise when Evan’s knowledge of Arabic allowed them to dance to a first-place finish. After cutting their teeth on victory in Morocco, they experienced a real tooth-cutting moment when Evan got hit by a sailing boom as she struggled to guide her dinghy out to sea in the Roadblock. Their dental make-up may have been shaken, but their confidence wasn’t, and she was able to start sailing smoothly, which carried over to their redemption of a performance in the next Head-to-Head.

The new cap on Evan’s tooth gave them a new attitude in the race as they sallied forth. Though while they continued to perform comfortably in the middle of the pack, some inter-team and intrateam tension was brewing, much like a Czech beer. Henry’s reticence in his communication and decision-making began to get on Evan’s nerves, while their more independent mindsets began to earn them the outsider status from the other teams. Their social standing certainly didn’t help them at the U-Turn board in Zimbabwe, where Indy car racers Alex Rossi and Conor Daly took advantage of being in the lead to target who they considered a large threat. They groused about now falling behind but were singing a different tune when Eric and Daniel Guiffreda’s twin tune troubles put them in fourth place. After Team Ocean Rescue got lost in the sea of the Dubai International Airport, Henry and Evan were sticking out like sore thumbs, now racing against the social group that had formed of Teams Big Brother, Indy Car, and Extreme. Knowing they were underdogs, they thought they found the perfect task for them during the Detour, when they were asked to calculate measurements for a live elephant. Their performance was anything but smooth as ivory, though, and they felt a sting as painful as a scorpion’s when they finished in last place. They were luckily spared elimination, and though they had to complete a lantern-lighting Speed Bump, Henry’s language skills illuminated their path to the final leg, becoming only the third team in the show’s history to complete a Speed Bump and still finish in first. Flying business class into their final destination of San Francisco, the superfans chose to check their bags at the gate, hoping that only needing to carry around their bodies and brains would prevail. Their brains temporarily betrayed them when their lapse in judgment had them paddling aimlessly in the San Francisco Bay for a sports record they did not know, and their bodies followed when Evan struggled during the ascender section of the Roadblock. Luckily, good fortune was in their favor, as their prowess making fortune cookies put them back in the thick of it, as they approached the final memory task. Having kept a notebook with all information about the race since the very beginning, Henry was confident they would take home the prize. But his technique of trial by error, a technique that benefited them the previous two legs, came back to bite him when he had switched away from the correct combination at one point. As a result, Jessica Graf was the first to finish and left Team Yale, who only finished several minutes later, eating their dust.

After the airing of the finale, Henry and Evan talk with me about whether there is a way to actually prepare for the show, how they were able to overcome the emotional turmoil of falling through the ranks, and what they think after seeing the other teams’ comments about them.

Suffice it to say, those were two eventful legs for you on last night’s episode. You start in last place, but then become one of a very select number of teams to go through a Speed Bump and still finish first. Then, after a lot of place shuffling in the final leg, you end up missing out on the victory by only a few minutes. What was it like to watch those experiences back?

Henry Zhang: I think what watching the race does is that it makes you relive the whole experiences. The ups and downs, the stress we were feeling at the time came back a little last night watching it. I don’t know if you’d [call it] highs and lows. Throughout the whole thing, I think we were mostly focused [and] excited at the moment. I think we approached the race [as a whole] that way as well.

How much of the race had you seen before you knew you were going to be racing?

Evan Lynyak: I grew up watching it on and off with my dad. He and I always talked about going on it one of these days, so it was a full circle opportunity to get to do it with Henry. In preparation for the race, we binge watched the whole thing.

Henry: Oh yeah. In three weeks, we watched ten seasons.

Evan: (Laughs.)

What made you want to seek each other out as partners?

Henry: I don’t know if there’s anyone else that I’d rather do this with. We met at the Yale debate team initially, so that’s how we got to know each other. That happened before we started dating, so I think having that experience in getting to compete together let us see some of the dynamics that would come out during the race, and hopefully, we would know how to work together. I think that definitely [came true].

Let’s talk some more about that preparation you mentioned before. It seemed like you were trying to prepare yourselves the best you could for every situation the race threw at you. What did that entail exactly, and now going through it, do you feel like there’s a way to ever truly prepare for The Amazing Race?

Evan: It was worth it to prepare. The main benefits of it were a couple of important mindsets that we took out of it. One: Trying to slow down in moments of high stress. Our motto for the race that we kept repeating was, “Measure twice, cut once.” Funnily enough, if there was anything I wish we had done better, it would still be that.

Does that apply to the elephant task in Thailand?

Evan: Oh man, so many different things. (Laughs.)

Henry: Yeah, we definitely measured that one twice. (Laughs.)

Evan: And I think the second most important thing we took out of preparing was that it’s a lot of stress. Even if you’re racing with someone you really care about, people fight and get upset. It’s important to keep going and find ways that you can debrief, recover from it. I think we implemented that well. With all of that said, there’s absolutely no way to anticipate what it feels like at the moment during a competition. I think it was helpful for us to have thought about those things ahead of time, but there’s a pretty hard stop to how much you can prepare for.

It’s safe to say there were more athletic teams than you on the race. You touted the idea of “brains versus brawn,” but you definitely fell behind on tasks such as the first Head-to-Head and the final Roadblock. Did you anticipate that would be one of your weaker points going in?

Henry: We are definitely not in the same type of athletic shape as some of these other types. But we still try to stay active; we go to the gym regularly. We have been thinking, after watching this whole thing, of some ways we can up our game. Getting some more gym time would definitely be one of them.

Evan: I think we always knew that athleticism was not going to be our advantage. (Laughs.) But, looking back on it, if I could have worked on some pull-ups, in particular, I would definitely do that.

I want to talk about that frites race a bit. I feel like it’s an Amazing Race fan’s worst nightmare to go into a task early and watch yourselves plummet as the others come in. You were able to save yourselves, but emotionally how do you steel yourself from not panicking at that moment?

Henry: That was definitely a hard moment for us to watch, especially because [since] it’s head-to-head, it’s more of an escalated feeling. The thing I kept thinking was, “It’s only the second leg. I want to keep racing with Evan. it’s too early to go out.” There are sometimes big gaps between the races because teams would be finishing tasks and we would have to be waiting for them to show up. And I think it’s easy to get frustrated them. But we both raced, and I think it was both of us trying to keep each other calm and prepare mentally and physically for the next that helped us eventually get it.

Evan: I think it was really important for us to realize that, because it was so early in the course of the race, we kept telling ourselves over and over again, “It doesn’t matter how many races we lose. We only have to win one.” (Laughs.) So we were pretty confident that we would be able to do that. [Also], I think recognizing the different things that give us energy was how we handled stress. I’m a pretty verbal person; I chatter and move around when I’m nervous. It got to a certain point when Henry told me that I needed to take a nap. (Laughs.) So he kind of just sat down, had some quiet time to himself. I had to step back and let him do that, but I appreciated that he was able to tell me that. And shortly after that was when he won the race, so it worked out well.

Henry: That’s so funny to me, taking a nap in the middle of the leg of The Amazing Race.

You talk about on the show how, compared to the other teams, you’re a bit more independent. As a result, you seem to find yourself at the final four on the outside of this three-team group. Was that independent way of thinking just something that came naturally?

Henry: The thing that’s relevant to debate is that we’re both very competitive. Obviously, we were focused first and foremost–as you have to be–on if you are able to complete the tasks. But I actually don’t think that over the course of the whole race, we were so [independent]. We got along well with the other teams. When at times it was mutually beneficial to help them, we definitely went out of our way to do that. When you focus on moments where you’re racing for last, I think most people would say, “Yes, we should not be helping another team there.” We were pretty firm on the right call to not do that.

So when you watch the episodes, and you see the comments the other teams made about you, did that come as a surprise to you?

Evan: It was somewhat surprising. I guess this is a credit to them that they were still very polite and civil to us. We were obviously aware of the fact that, once it was the final four teams, the other three teams were certainly better friends with one another than they were with us. We didn’t pick up on any active animosity. To hear frustration and sometimes even anger. For example, in Zimbabwe, when I decided to try to complete the puzzle with my partner before helping another team that I was competing against when I thought we could be competing to avoid elimination. Intellectually, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But knowing what the conditions are like, I’m super empathetic to what they were experiencing, and I can completely understand why, at the moment, it would be frustrating and upsetting.

Those types of moments also helped inform Team Indy Car’s decision to U-Turn you. Were you surprised when you saw your picture up on the board?

Henry: Yeah, I don’t think we were expecting it. Especially since we thought these teams were fierce competitors, they would try to take out the team that’s the biggest competitor, and that would have been X Games at the time. But I think once we saw that, we were both quickly like, “We just need to focus and try not to be freaked out. We’ve got a chance [since] there’s a double U-Turn, and if [we learned] anything from watching these past seasons of the race, you just need to know that anything can happen.

I want to talk about your differing communication styles. Evan, you mentioned before that you’re very verbal in thinking things through, while Henry’s more internal with that logic. That divide let to a couple of moments in the race where things came to a head before eventually resolving. What led to those temporary impasses?

Evan: We’re very aware that between the two of us, I tend to process things verbally. So if I need to solve a problem or even if I’m experiencing an emotion, just saying out loud what is going on inside my head, I find helpful and difficult not to do. Whereas Henry, personality-wise, tends to think about things very deeply and analytically first and pick through what he’s experiencing internally before articulating it. I think we were aware of those tendencies coming into the race.

Henry: Absolutely

Evan: Thankfully for me, Henry is a very patient and kind person who knows those things about me. Both of us tried to maintain the attitude that we understand what the other person is experiencing and as long as we’re able to do our best to express it appropriately and work through it once emotions have settled down a little bit, that’s a successful interaction for us.

Evan, can we get a tooth update? Did you get it worked on after the race after chipping it in Saint-Tropez?

Evan: (Laughs.) Thankfully for me, the show took great care of me, and I had my tooth repaired the next day very speedily. I went to the dentist last week to make sure that the nerve hadn’t died after that contact with the sailing boom. Thankfully, I’m all good.

Glad to hear the tooth got a boon, in spite of the boom. You’ve worked together in competitive environments, in a relationship, and as partners on the race. Did you learn anything new about each other while racing together?

Henry: I think the thing that’s distinct about the race is [that] it has conditions that you’re not going to experience anywhere else in life. I think having the high stress makes you appreciate the other person if you work well together, which I absolutely think we did. There’s a really good balance that we had, and I think getting to put that to the test in tense, competitive environments, was really awesome to see. Evan’s great, basically.

Evan: (Laughs.) I mean, likewise. I went into this very much appreciating Henry as a partner in so many different aspects of life, and [the race] confirmed it. I already mentioned that I think he’s exceptional in his patience and understanding with the ways that I express myself, and I still think that. Also, you never know how you’re going to feel working with your partner underneath conditions. Throughout the entire [race], I just felt so confident and that I could rely on him, which I think is a special thing. That was great to experience.