Get Low. The lower, the better. Try for a 90 degree knee bend. Over
longer distances, you won't be able to maintain this, but bend 'em as much as
you can.
Keep your weight centred and off of your toes. Push through the center of
the frames. As an exercise, think about pushing through the heels at the end of
the stroke. Make your heel-wheel the last wheel to leave the pavement at the end
of the stroke.
Push to the side, not to the back. Push as laterally as you can. Your
foot will go to the back a little bit, but if you think "push straight to the
side" you'll end up with a more efficient push.
Transfer your weight completely to the new support skate. Don’t just
toddles back and forth from skate to skate; instead really fall onto the support
leg. Make a total commitment of your body weight as you fall and push
simultaneously. You should be able to fall on that support leg and then glide on
one skate for a while. If you immediately tip back on to the other skate, then
you weren't committed. You hedged your bets and didn't get as much push as you
could have.
It's also good to have a nice, relaxed recovery stroke. For this, imagine
the McDonald's golden arches behind you on the pavement. Push to the side, then
trace an arch behind you with your toe wheel. Your frames should be almost
vertical with respect to the ground as you recover. Then, at the end, drive your
recovering knee forward so your recoveraing skate is slightly ahead of your
pushing skate. Don't just set it down. Instead sweep it to the side and fall on
to it as in 4) above. This gives you a good, hard conventional power push.
Cross-overs are pretty important. Try to push as radially (laterally) as
you can with the foot on the inside of the turn. Lean in to the turn.
Next you can learn the double push!
Eddy Matzger
does great camps on this!. Another great resource is Barry Publow's book,
Speed on Skates.
And The classic is ice speedskater
Dianne Holum's
out of print and hard-to-find book, The Complete Handbook of Speed Skating.