I have recently started learning Pokémon speedrunning and I see there is both a Mudkip Route and a Torchic Route. I see almost everyone (including the current world record) uses Mudkip.

Which one is faster (and roughly by how much)? And which one is the riskier route?

Thanks

I'm pretty sure Mudkip is faster and yes it's definitely the more popular route (well there's mudkip-abra and mudkip-abraless too, but torchic might have that too). But it's pretty popular that people try to route and run other starters for fun, which is a fine reason to try Torchic.

EDIT: Also if you have no interest in Mudkip at all, feel free to submit any other run you do, as long as you follow the rules of the leaderboards c:

Thank you, I assumed Mudkip was faster as most people run Mudkip. I probably won't try and route other starters because I'm sure that, if there was a faster alternative, it would've been found by now