What about picking up ice beam earlier? It seems to me it would be faster (in-game) to freeze the creature and go through the ceiling to pick up Spring Ball than waiting for the graple block to desapear and climb all the way up. The problem i see in picking up Ice Beam earlier is that it would be a little slower in the post-gate rooms due to the fact that you don't have Space Jump or Spring Ball, but probably just some frames. Also, there would be the need of entering the gates room after Maridia to break the PB blocks and go get that annoying missile, so it would be another door trasition for realtime and maybe one more second in-game time wasted till Samus reach the PB block, but this loss would be a trade off for more in-game time when getting the SpringBall with the freeze glitch. Another problem is that the TASer would have to clean all the way using Missiles or he would have to disable the ice beam and to enable it again to fight Ridley would be more two pause screens. Also, it's sure faster (in-game) to go to Crocomire's area having Plasma (for Crocomire), Space Jump (for Power Bombs and the Missile after Grapple) and the SpringBall for the last Missile of the area. Going to Crocomire's area would be probably faster if done like in Console runs, i mean, after beating Ridley, so you don't have to stop Samus while she is in full speed when passing over Crocomire's door.
Another concern is that if you let Crocomire for later, you wouldn't have the early power bombs from his area and in that case it would be better to let Kraid for later too, when you would have PB. But if you do that, maybe it wouldn't be possible to go through Wrecked Ship due to the lack of energy because you didn't pick up the energy Tank in Kraid's area, and that could be a problem too for picking up the PB In Crateria before entering the Gauntlet (that would be another problem)...
If there was a way of doing all things above mentioned, the route would be: Go to Norfair instead of Kraid's area, get the Speedbooster and come back, get ice beam and up to Wrecked Ship, come back through Crateria getting the PB and the itens in the gauntlet, go for Brinstar Clean up and after that, head to Maridia. After Maridia Head to Kraid, Ridley and after that go for Crocomire's area.
There are probably issues i don't remember now that could turn this route slower, if not unfeasible. Also, iirc the in-game time of Cpadolf's last run was 36:03 (?), and if he is right about the time he could save in a new run, the final time would be around 35:30, so even if this route i mentioned is feasible and does save in-game time, if he didn't manage to clean the way using missiles and really have to enter the pause screen to enable or disable the ice beam, it would be probably around 9 seconds slower in realtime, and if the new route (if feasible) doesn't save at least this 9 seconds back, it wouldn't be worth going for it as the run would be slower in realtime than you could do. Anyway, i'm probably saying bullshit here.
Edit: Are you sure that going for Kraid first would be faster? If you do that, you'll have to back track later to get that annoying missile. If going for Kraid first would be a choice, then climbing the Brinstar Shaft to get early power bombs would be a better option, so you can avoid backtracking to Kraid's area and could use the Shortcut in Bubble room when returning from SpeedBooster. PB would be usefull too when returning from Hijump boosts. In Console conditions, earlier pb saves around 5 seconds, but it could be different in TAS conditions.
Well, This is basically the same route for Console runs, the difference here would be Cleaning Upper crateria after Wrecked Ship...
