Rachel has the right idea here; skiing is so much a technical sport that economy must come largely from doing the thing itself. Coming into it with a good aerobic base is quite valuable, but the significant gains for you will come as your body adapts to the technique and finds greater biomechanical efficiency in the movements. Right now you’re expending a higher energy cost due to the muscles working so hard to ski correctly – in this vein, you can indeed gain some ground by doing short, relatively-fast speeds wherein you’re able to attain really good technique and balance and power but not for so long that you drain the system. Long rests in between allow those untrained muscles to recover and be ready for the next one. 30-45sec max for the on-time, maybe 2-3 min easy skiing for the off-time.

If you’re not already, make sure to really be keeping on top of core strength – as an open-chain, full-body sport, skiing requires that the core hold tension in order to engage arms and legs in synch with one another. If the core is weak, you hold undue tension in one or both of those links in the chain and increase your caloric burn rate, and decrease time to fatigue. Relaxation is the key!

This ?? we need thumb up option here 🙂

I learned so much from just a single lesson that I decided to have a lesson every 1-2 weeks. Kinda shame that this too has diminishing returns 😀

Sam, I’ve noticed myself that the strategy you described works quite well without knowing why so thanks for explaining the reasons behind it 🙂