Do your utmost, in short, to improve your steering in every possible way, and then try to run everything as straight and fast as ever you can.
I don’t, of course, mean that you are to become a past master at swinging and turning before you try to run straight and fast, for the two things can be practised together. But steering must come first, and until you can steer as well with your long grooved ski and without the help of the stick as the most redoubtable Lilienfeld stick-rider with his short smooth skis, you must give much more attention to that than to speed.
Your ultimate aim must, as I have already said, be to run in the utmost safety, with the utmost skill (i.e. with the least effort) and at the utmost speed; but if ever, as in a race, speed is almost your sole object, remember the following facts:—
Apart from the question of obstacles, the quickest way to get down a hill is of course to run freely straight down it.
The second quickest way is a free direct descent checked at intervals by uphill swings, so that the speed never becomes high enough to be difficult.
The third quickest way is a direct stemming (Telemark, snow-plough, or side-slip) descent, and not, as most people imagine, a free descent by tacks and downhill turns. The latter method takes more skill and less effort, but is a great deal slower.
To sum up, let me advise you to take in succession each of the following series of “Don’ts” as your guiding maxim when learning cross-country running:—
(1) Don’t fall (but stem, kick-turn, and stop ad lib.).
(2) Don’t stop (i.e. stem ad lib., but make no kick-turns).
(3) Don’t stem (but make as gradual tacks as you like, and check the pace when necessary by uphill swings).