>"off to the races" is interesting too
"off to the races" is a common term. It's not something that requires any analysis at all.
It just means to get started quickly, with speed.
There is no embedded code. You don't need to give each letter a number, and then add the numbers together to see if the numbers add to 17. That's what crazy people do. And us, here, we do a lot of that, too. We shouldn't.