Every time I pick up a new playerless game I tend to make tons of saves and go section by section, but that means I won't have seen the later section (in a speed context) at all for days or weeks.

An example right now is the 4X game Age of Wonders 3, where I'm up to map 4, I feel like I could Single Section the whole game in an hour and a half, but I'm really caught up replaying things before the speedrun is even complete (hence map 1 down to 5 minutes, map 2 down to 8 minutes, map 3 down to 14 minutes, etc)

But I'm questioning the real value of this kind of practice, especially when the levels at the end of the run are the lion's share of content (map 6 expected to take 28ish minutes alone in ideal circumstances)

I felt fine doing this method in games for other genres so maybe I just apply it withought reflecting on things (twin stick shooters, Turn Based RPGs, Platformers, Real Time Strategy)

I often feel like I do a complete Individual Level Table for games I want to speedrun before doing a complete Single Segment... but I don't see a way to avoid doing that or you wouldn't have useful splits for your final Single Segment.