Well, I'm not entirely new. I've been floating around the speed run community for a while, watching people do runs and practicing games in the slight chance I wanted to give a speed run a shot. Well I have now decided I want to start speed running I just don't know where I should start, as in how to get the timer and any universal rules I may be unaware of. Any help would be amazing and I look forward to putting forward some runs.

Oh cool! Hi. I've been lurking around for a while too. Timer, you can just use LiveSplit (download it on the LiveSplit website obvi) or you can just retime when you finish recording if you can't use LiveSplit for whatever reason. In terms of rules... huh. Well, for starters, don't cheat. Most of the rules come from the game you wanna run. Just make your run watchable and follow the game rules to a T and you should be fine. Feel free to always ask questions, the speedrunning community would answer them. They've helped me thru a lot of newbie stuff too