Mario, for instance, once you jump, there's not much to do until he actually lands
Mario games let you change momentum while jumping, to compensate for the lack of fine control on your initial speed. This actually does matter a lot in speed runs. For example, Mario 64 speedruns rely heavily on a super fast backwards long jump that starts with switching directions in the air.
A speed run of real life wouldn't start with you eating lunch really fast, it would start with you sprinting to a computer.
From Toby Ord:
Though there are limits to what AIs could do with sheer speed, it's interesting that great performance can be achieved with speed alone, that this allows different strategies from usual ones, and that it allows the exploitation of otherwise unexploitable glitches and bugs in the setup.