(FORTUNE Small Business) – Don't even try to steer," the instructor tells us with a straight face. "On your first few runs, you'll only make things worse." I'm sitting with about 30 other people in the track operations building of Utah Olympic Park, where the sliding events in last year's Winter Olympics were held. We're here for skeleton school, a chance to learn the basics of the sport in a classroom and then try going 60 miles an hour just inches off the ice. Don't steer--right, got it. Good to know.

Utah Olympic Park still hosts world-class competitions, but it's also open to the public year-round. You can take a bobsled run, race your brother-in-law at the speed-skating track, or work on sticking your landings at the aerial ski jump (see "Your Own Private Winter Games"). Among all the choices, I was most intrigued by skeleton. It's one of those sports that look deceptively easy on television--similar to luge, but you ride headfirst on sleds that are a little slower and a lot less maneuverable. (A world-class luge run is around 90 mph, while in skeleton it's more like 80 mph.) The other difference is that lugers will occasionally botch a turn and get flung completely off the track. That's why there aren't many luge camps for beginners.

In 2002 skeleton returned to the Olympics after a 54-year gap, and the U.S. won gold in both the men's and women's events. One of the bigger names of the Games was Jim Shea, whose father and grandfather were both Winter Olympians. Just a few weeks before the Salt Lake City Games began, Shea's grandfather, who'd won two gold medals in speed skating in 1932, was killed in a car accident. Jim carried the funeral card in his helmet when he defied the oddsmakers to win gold.

Skeleton is on the slate again for the 2006 Turin Winter Games, and coaches here aren't above scouting for talent among novices. So they set up a few experimental classes this winter on the Utah track. About half the people in mine are Park City locals, and a few are definitely thinking of taking up the sport competitively. We each get three rides a day from successively higher starting points, though before even seeing the sleds we have to hand over our insurance cards. Just a precaution, I'm assured.

The Swiss get credit for inventing skeleton, back in 1885 in Saint Moritz. Each year the original track is entirely rebuilt by local families who pull blocks of ice from a nearby lake. Adventurous pilgrims can actually travel there and slide down it, which must be a little like shooting free throws at James Naismith's original peach basket. Despite what you might think, the name "skeleton" doesn't come from the likely result of a bad run but rather from the stripped-down appearance of the sleds. Structurally they're nothing but a set of runners attached to a frame. Olympic-level sleds can cost up to $3,000, with metal-alloy runners that are $1,000 a pair, but the ones we'll use today are plain steel and heavy as a desk. If you dropped one on your foot, you'd break something. They also have a surprising amount of duct tape on them, which I try not to speculate about.

During the classroom session the instructors hammer home the importance of form. It's impossible to make the sleds go any faster down the ice, so instead the goal is to avoid the things that slow them down. That means keeping your body in a bullet shape to minimize wind resistance (people with narrow shoulders tend to do better). We're given a little mnemonic device to keep us focused during the runs: "nose and toes," meaning we should keep our heads down as low as possible, peer out under the front edge of the helmet, and point our feet straight out behind.

The instructors also mention that we should hold on to the sled no matter what. Coming off one is extremely rare, but when it does happen, the biggest danger is friction burn. Yes, it's ice, but because you're moving so fast, the heat builds up quickly. One of our instructors, Colleen Rush, was a leading contender to make the U.S. Olympic team last year, but she hit a wall and knocked herself out, sliding unconscious the rest of the way down the track. Her plastic gloves melted into her palms, and when the blisters and swelling finally came down weeks later, she was still picking pieces of the gloves out. She's matter-of-fact with us about it, though. "If you do fall off, try to lie flat and rotate around," she says. "Like a hot dog. It disperses the heat. You want even grilling."

For our first run we start stationary from about two-thirds of the way up the track. When they call my name, I climb into position on the sled and whisper, "Nose and toes, nose and toes." Before coming today, I'd read that the sleds were the size of cafeteria trays, but that's an exaggeration. In terms of surface area they're more like coffee tables, though that doesn't mean they're spacious. I stick out on all four sides, and while staring in anticipation down at turn No. 6, I feel less like a bullet and more like an awkward 35-year-old worried about spinal-compression injuries. Then Colleen gives me a little push, and I'm off.

The sled picks up speed, and the noise of the wind in my helmet quickly becomes a small storm. Within seconds the ice is shooting by so fast that you understand why they don't want us to steer--the sleds are way ahead of our ability to react. You see a turn approaching and then--zoom--you're already through it and accelerating to the next one. In steep turns the G forces squeeze you down like a fat man sitting on your back. I'm holding the handles so hard that my hands start to cramp.

The toes-and-nose thing really works, though, at least for the top of the run. I shoot into each turn on more or less the right line, not because of any action on my part but more because I don't screw anything up. A bowling ball pushed down the track would do about as well. Unfortunately, the bottom part doesn't go as smoothly. I hit the wall several times, hard, and then start pinballing back and forth. The walls are half-inch-thick plastic, like the sides of a hockey arena, so they don't have a lot of give. That night I'll find football-sized bruises on my upper arms that will take two weeks to heal.

At the bottom I'm giddy and disoriented, resolving to hold my form a little more firmly next trip down. Ideally your head is so low that you can dip your helmet a bit and scrape your face guard along the ice, but I could tell my head was too high. I could see all the turns, the parking lot--in certain spots I thought I remembered seeing clouds. Maybe that's what went wrong.

The second run, however, convinces me that keeping the helmet down is not the answer. I do manage to touch my face guard to the ice a few times, but that also means I'm basically riding blind. With your head in the correct position, you can see merely ten feet ahead, and at 55 mph, that gives you 0.125 second of reaction time--only enough for me to choose between gasping and shrieking. The bottom of the run doesn't go any better: more pinballing, bigger bruises.

On our third run we begin from slightly higher up, the women's luge start, which gives us a couple more big turns and pushes our speeds into the low 60s. Colleen tells us we should start thinking about small steering corrections, guiding the sled by kicking the ice on one side or the other. (At higher levels you steer by weighting and unweighting your knees and shoulders, but the toe kicks are like training wheels.)

Although I'm anticipating a slightly better sense of where I am on the track and better ability to hold my form after the first two runs, the extra speed wipes away those good intentions. The G forces in big turns become even stronger (that fat man on my back just keeps getting heavier), and the inevitable interaction with the wall that much more emphatic. I'm now exceeded in ability by the bowling ball. The fact that people do this at 80 mph is a little hard for me to think about.

It's small solace that most of the others in the class are doing almost as poorly. From a position along turn No. 11, I watch other students come fishtailing down, legs flailing, banging into the wall like drunken Nascar drivers.

However, my most lasting image of the day is watching one person with some experience in the sport. He's wearing one of those bright-

yellow superhero suits, and when I see him whoosh into turn No. 12, he's in perfect bullet form, the sled runners practically silent. He looks almost like a pulse of color shooting down a fiber-optic strand. One of the beginners next to me sees him and says, "See? It's easy."