Difficulty Meter The most intense 21-second crunch of your life

Muskegon, Michigan

• Drive Time 3.25 hours

Embrace your inner Olympian at the Muskegon Winter Sports Complex, where you can cruise down a luge track designed by 1980s U.S. champ and three-time Olympian Frank Masley. Though kids 8 and up can ride, the sport is ideal for grownups who want to forget they’re exercising, since its mega–adrenaline rush can disguise the workout’s physical demands. Sign up for the 2.5-hour Learn to Luge (from $40, msports.org). You’ll be outfitted with a helmet and elbow pads and get schooled on how to control the sled before being unleashed down 650 feet of track—about one-tenth the size of an Olympic course. At speeds of up to 30 miles an hour, you’ll fly through four curves and two straightaways and experience 2.2 g’s of force, all in about 21 seconds. You’ll get another three to eight rides (depending on group size), but only after lugging your luge up the 65 stairs each time. Think of it as a bonus workout.

The Particulars

Body Burn You’ll work your core keeping your balance on the way down—and your shoulders and arms hauling your sled back up.

Stay Ask for a water view at the 10-story, 139-room Shoreline Inn (from $119, shorelineinn.com) on Muskegon Lake, with views as far off as the dunes.

While there The must-sees at the Muskegon Museum of Art ($8, muskegonartmuseum.org) include John Steuart Curry’s Tornado Over Kansas, Edward Hopper’s New York Restaurant, and Common Ground, a show of 85 works by African American artists, which runs through April 17.