I think Cody killed speedrunning during the Beta when he tore through that Hive Wizard.

That video was strangely depressing.

I was never personally a hardcore speedrunner in the Halo days, but I did push myself to cut corners and at least beat my friends to the next encounter. With the repeating of missions through strikes, and the ability to increase your agility,

Comes at the cost of Armour or Recovery through. I've mostly found that stacking armour as high as I can is the way to go as it allows me to just tank damage as I run past; from shots that I can't see coming and can't really dodge.

... it seems like Destiny is set up perfectly for speedrunners.

Hardly.

You can't view your times in the PGCR on b.net.
You can't see what modifers were on.
Or the gear in use at the time.
Or the level it was set at.
Or the version of the game in use (relevant as some encounters have been made easier since launch).
Or if the game was resumed from a checkpoint or from the start of the level.
No timer on the HUD.
And the 'pop-out-from-the-side' recent games list isn't sortable or searchable at all.

Maximising your effectiveness is heavily dependant your gear and weapons. Getting the upgrades you want to get the nice synergies between using a weapon and grenades and such. You can't even compete on level 20+ runs until you've got your light level up.

The public areas are super-random: entire encounters just disappear because some other Guardian in the area recently cleared out those enemies.

I don't think speed running Destiny is something people should take particularly seriously. They certainly shouldn't be chasing seconds - it'll quickly get infuriating. Sure, there are encounters you can skip, methods that make certain encounters easier or quicker. But it's a general level of expertise and not as specific or insane as Halo runs got.

Probably.

Is there anything out there with official best times? I love seeing the times drop as people continue to beat records.

Official? Not that I'm aware of.

Both DestinyDB and DestinyTracker have lists. But either their data is whack or their runners suck. Pretty sure I ran the Devil's Lair Nightfall solo today quicker than any of DestinyDB's times while only trying to stay alive. Also, I was going sub-2-minutes on The Dark Within during the ALPHA, so the 3 minutes DestinyTracker quotes is just horrific.

Don't even know where they're getting their data.

BTW, I am working on something related. I hope it's going to be cool but, I can't tell yet.