Following the pics of Dodgeman's rod failure,Broken rod I thought it might be worth explaining typical rod prep for a race engine and why its worth doing properly.

First get a set of rods that are suitable for preparation. The rods should have very close weights at each end so they can be easily adjusted during balancing with minimal material removal. This may require checking quite a few rod sets to find the best suited.

The chosen rods are X-rayed to check for casting inclusions or voids. Next they are crack tested by both magnetic flux and dye penetrant methods. If these processes do not show any problems, the rods are aligned and closed/honed to size.

Polish them along the beams to remove dimples and surface bumps and balanced them to 0.25 grams at each end.

Finally the rods are shot peened. Shot peening involves small steel shot being fired at the rod surfaces at very high speeds. When the shot hits the surface of the rod it makes a small dent in the steel, compresssing the surface, making the steel move outwards around the impact area. As the steel moves, any small surface cracks or deformities are sealed over or removed by the impact.
As the steel moves, it work hardens the metal surface skin of the rod increasing beam strength. It is becoming more common to double peen rods using a large shot to get maximum surface movement of the steel, following with a fine shot to get into areas where the large shot is not able to move effectively.

On average to fully prep a set of 4 rods costs around $1000 - $1200 for the processing and larger rod bolts