I am noticing on the speed runs for some of the Batman games people are glitching and modding that counts as a valid speed run?

1. Speedruns contain glitches unless categories restrict them.
2. Define modding. Modding a console to play a game from a different region is allowed (usually). Modding a console to play a game faster than normal is not allowed.

i empathize with your thread title

why are you confused about speedruns containing glitches

I guess I was under the impression that when doing a speed run you try to complete a game as fast as possible under normal setting or within the parameters of the game....Glitching I thought was a cheat, like doing a speed run on Sonic The Hedgehog but using the debug code. I am new will adjust, and do the best I can within the borders of the games.

Glitching is within the boundaries of the game though. A glitch is something inside of a game that you exploit to do something unintended. Basically using faulty programming or oversights to do something unintended, but only by using what's available to you in the game itself.

Using a debug code like you mentioned is cheating because that is external to the game and is something you're adding to make the game play differently. Things like game genies, crooked cart, and hacked ROMs are in that category as well.

Thanks for the input guys, since I am a noob and don't know glitches, LOL...I will go for the challenge of speedruns without glitches.

It's your choice of course, but learning glitches can be a lot of fun! They're usually a lot trickier than playing the game the intended way.

You can definitely do glitchless speedruns, and many game communities already have a "Glitchless" category set up. If they don't, get on that game's forum and ask about it...most likely the mods will add it if there is any interest.

A good way to think about it is:

Speedrunners use two basic methods to beat games faster than in casual play:

1. Expertise: skill at the game and knowledge beyond that of the average casual player leads to the speedrunner knowing which fights/areas/goals are avoidable, knowing strats that speed up fights, puzzles, platforming sections, etc, and to the speedrunner being able to perform well in various in-game ways (fight faster, platform more confidently, etc).
2. Skips: skips actually skip sections of the game that were put in place by the designers.

Skips, in turn, can be divided into two different types:

1. Execution-based: the speedrunner uses superior skill/knowledge of the movements possible in the game to skip sections without using any glitches. A good example from my main gain is a skip where, instead of an appearing/disappearing bridge puzzle combined with enemies that can cost a lot of time under the best conditions, I run up to the edge of one of the bridges, jump off, and execute a combo that gets me over to the exit without having to wait:
2. Glitch-based: the speedrunner uses knowledge of the features of the game itself, as a piece of software, often in combination with execution, to skip sections of the game. Another example from my main game is a skip where I use the fact that the game developers never made the ceiling of this area actually block anything to do a combo that takes me up and out, allowing me to skip several fights, areas, and cut-scene loads:

I hope that helps. Welcome to speedrunning. :)