Source: http://www.mensjournal.com/expert-advice...

The Canada Olympic Park in Calgary is home to the only luge track in North America that lets the general public give the sport a try. During select blocks of time on select days, the Alberta Luge Association opens the track as a fundraiser for its development program. Participants pre-register for a time slot and pay $35 a run. Volunteers hand out elbow pads and helmets as Novice Coach Lindsay Forsberg provides one-on-one instruction and guidance from the launch platform. As a safety precaution, participants start a third of the way up, not at the top.

"If we started them up there, they'd all die," says Forsberg. She's not exactly joking. The 30-second ride careens around five banked turns and sees terrified first-timers reaching speeds of up to 45 miles an hour.

Forsberg's number one rule is simple: Stay lying down. "The track pretty much takes you where it needs you to go and you help it out by the way you shift your body weight," she says. "When people start ping-ponging off the sides, the instinct is to sit up, but that's like taking your hands off the steering wheel on the highway."