Who knows, maybe PLAYERONE simply didn’t know of better runs and couldn’t realize how good or bad his run actually was.
My recommendations for him/her are:
1. Stop using Bizhawk. Just stop, it is pointless and useless for Sonic TAS. :)
2. Install
Sonic TAS tools and Gens hacks designed specially for Sonic games, they provide a lot more information about your speed, position and so on…
3. Start using frame advance (usually «\» button, can be configured in emulator settings) instead of slow mode.
4. Learn the basic physics of the game: spin dash, braking technics (at least the basic ones), ways to stop faster (hit terrain or object, abuse terrain ejection, use speed caps). The physics are common for all the games and hacks, the differences are usually very slight.
5. Learn the ways to boost speed, a lot of methods involve jumps and loops, there are some “common” loop jumps, they are: up-loop jump, down-loop jump and out-loop jumps. In your run, you simply run through every single loop, missing a lot of places where you could take HUGE boosts.
6. Learn about the glitches. As any other complex computer program, Sonic is full of bugs, many of which are very well known and the ways to set them up are documented. A lot of bugs lead to huge time-savers.
7. Join Sonic TAS community. We work together a lot to make better and better runs.
Most of the information can be found on this page:
http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/Genesis/SonicTheHedgehog.html