I'm 26 years old, got my first pc just before Doom came along and changed my life (and schoolgrades), and have played FPS' alot. I never played Counterstrike though =)

I work in the Norwegian millitary, in the northern part of Norway, at a place called Sörreisa. We have a CRC here (nato term for Control and Reporting Centre or Radar Centre if you will), and I work there. Apart from playing games, I don't do much. I'm single, don't have any kids, weekdays I play computer games and work, weekends I party. So nothing fancy =)

Anyway, about the time on E1m3 (NR), I'm first of all trying to beat Markus' time for my own personal achievement. I'm probably not going to reach 23:9 seconds, but if I can beat his 24:9, I'll be satisfied. So this is strictly for personal enjoyment I'm doing this. With no servers to play on, no competition to even challenge me blindfolded in the neighbourhood, what do you do...? Ah! Speedrunning! Hella fun, I thought. And I found that it really is exciting. I even get really nervous towards the end of a run, when I know I have a good time. Nothing quite felt the same since the good old days of clanwars.

I've not done speedruns on much other than episode 1, I had some decent times on e1m1 and e1m2, but those got whiped in a harddrive crash, but they were at least 2 seconds slower than current records, I think, so that was no big deal. I will mainly attempt maps that doesnt have many monsters getting in the way, cause that annoys me so much. And because of that I've mostly played e1m3 so far. I probably have at least a couple of thousand tries behind me to get that 0:26, but in the beginning I was really rusty and was just playing and learning some tricks, not worrying about the time to much. Now I've nailed the tricks down pretty good, and do a pretty snug Ogre-grenade jump after that gold door, if I may say so myself. It's maybe slightly slower than the one Markus does, but the way he does it makes it extremely hard to reach the ledge. I've actually found the most difficult thing with the level to be setting up the last fiend for the doorstop. That's really down to luck, as far as I can tell.

I would consider 23:9 to be reachable, but it would all have to come together just that one time, and that's difficult I guess. I think I'll be down on 0:25 any day now, after that, who knows =)

Markus' run was an enormous inspiration for most of us I guess, but even so, there is room for improvement. A couple of places to improve is:

1. Start. He waits too long to start speedjumping, you can go straight from start, no problem. I guess what he thought at the time was that you'd need excess speed to go "around" the fiend, but you dont really need that, you can go past him right in front of his nose.

2. In the tunnel next, I do a speedjump, and while you hit the roof with your head, you can get a decent speedboost from that.

3. Grenadeshot down to the gold key can be done faster. It makes it harder to get that nice boost, that carries you all the way to the door, but it's not that hard.

4. The Ogregrenade jump he performs isn't perfect, but it's good because he performs it so early after he's through the door. The jump I do takes alittle more time to do, but it's alot "safer" or easier to perform. I have about 20-25% chance to do make it across. I would think Markus' chances were lower with the way he performs the jump. I might be wrong, never talked to the guy. In any case, my jump makes me fly across pretty fast, and land perfectly in the water, at the side of the first ghoul. I shoot them depending on my health, it's not really necessary to shoot the first 2 I think.

5. He does take long to position the fiend, you don't have to step back that much really, although it does make it easier. Like I said earlier the doorstopping fiend is the hardest trick to me. Not only getting him to go towards the door, but also making that last sneaky jump that sends you towards the button. Those doors have blocked me many times, and with the fiend right next to you, yer dead =) Anyway, with alittle more powerful speedjumps, this part can be done faster.

Well, thats just my 3 pennies anyway. In theory it sounds easy, but....well you know the rest.