CS: Heavy people have an advantage in that type of condition. But usually the refrigeration on the track is controlled so we have the ice at just about freezing. Every place we go to we try to break the track record.

TG: You have to know a track. If I don't, I'm usually up pretty high off my sled. I'm taking in the view, more or less. I like to see what's going on. I won't steer very much. I'll just take the hits and really figure out what the track feels like.

CS: With experience, you can apply some of the things that you've learned from other tracks and different types of curves to the new track. Figuring those things out is half the fun. You go to a new track and find a really cool curve. And you think, "I'd like to know how to get through there as fast as I can."

TG: Every track has something that no other track will have. And that's what's so fun. Like in Altenberg, there's a kreisel, which is a 360-degree turn. And it has this super-long straight going into it, one of my other favorite things. And there is no other kreisel that I've ever been in that's like that. You literally dip up and down maybe five times. You feel like you're in it forever. Suddenly you're in a time warp. You're in the curve, then you look up and you're still in the curve. And you think, "Oh, my God, am I going to come out?" Then you sing a little song, and then all of a sudden, smack, you're out of it. It's totally unique. It's like three seconds, but it feels like forever.

CS: Some of the kreisels go 270 degrees. But it's a curve that loops back underneath itself. There's one in Konigsee which we went to this year. That one's exciting for me. If you get it right, you come whipping out into this little chicane area where there are two bent walls, and you just cruise through those, and then you go and hit a couple of high G curves so your head gets pushed down into the ice. You usually realize afterwards that you've gone through there correctly, and you went really fast. On the track we're going to next in St. Moritz, one of the curves down at the bottom of the track almost goes flat. The track drops down, and you get a moment of vertigo. You're up in the air and you kind of whip right down, and that's the highest speed that you get on the track. You just drop down right out of that curve into the straightaway. I think I had one of the highest speeds there, it was about 86 miles an hour. When you go off that, it's almost like a jump. You feel that speed right in your face. Curves and combinations of curves are it. In Konigsee there's a section called the S's. You loop up, then swoosh down and loop up again. And they're back to back. So they run into each other. And there's no straightaway in between each one of them. They just run right into each other. You go back and forth and back and forth, and then you go down into a straightaway.

TG: It's so fun. They just go right into each other. You shoot up so high. It's the best. You keep wanting to go through them again and again. It's a blast.

CS: You're going the fastest as you enter the curve, because then the pressure that pushes you down into a curve slows you down. The friction increases, and people start putting their heads down and that creates friction, and you're redirecting the sled, that's causing friction also. All those things slow you down. The highest speeds are entering a curve, or on a straightaway.

I'm hoping someone will build a loop-to-loop on a track. You can have enough speed to handle it. I've seen skateboarders do it. They've gone on full circles. Or a spiral; I'm waiting for the first track with a spiral on it. Those will be really interesting.

TG: It's like a roller coaster, except you're not connected. And you control where the sled goes. You're in more control.

CS: People who are good at the planning, the visualization, the mental part of it are able to handle the speed. We're constantly working on the track visualization. Before we even go to any track, we get track notes from our coach. And we get a track map so we know which way the curves go. There's a lot more preparation and training than just whipping yourself down the hill. You're working on the mental part of it constantly.

Nothing compares to skeleton. But any sport that I do I'll apply a lot of what I learned in this sport to. I mean, lugers, they're still lying on their back, and I don't see the appeal in that.

TG: They don't have nearly as much fun. They don't talk about their sport the way we talk about sliding.

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