I feel like I've gotten pretty close. I keep dying at the super tiny mini platforms beyond those energy balls ( right before the large poundy gnomes ). My tip for the energy balls though is to jump off the higher beam so that you land right behind a passing ball. Then keep moving forward and jump to the next beam right as an energy ball passes under you. As long as you time the jump between beams with jumping over energy balls, you'll save time, otherwise you'll have to jump straight up once.
I've gotten furthest with Rose, actually ( surprising, I figured Citron was going to get me furthest ). If you want, you can use that center power of hers to phase right through those balls.
Here's a link to my current best attempt (
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AshEU6qla5r6iNwuNiavlbPNpQYx6Q ). Hopefully the part where I dodge the energy balls there helps. It seems to be possible to completely avoid jumping more than once on each beam, but that may depend on character (I've gotten past this with Citron as well).
I'm not sure where the end is, for the timer anyway, because after the mini platforms, then the poundy gnomes, then more platforms. I don't see how I could beat it with 17 seconds on the clock from where I was.
EDIT: Beaten with imp. Got to the mini platforms with around 29 seconds to spare several times. So you have the mini platforms, long row of pointy gnomes, then maybe three platforms to run and jump over which aren't a challenge but exist to draw out the time. I had 4 seconds to spare. My biggest tip? Angle the camera almost completely downward when on the mini platforms. I hadn't done that the first several times. In fact, once I figured that out, 70% of the trial was spent with the camera at a near downward angle since I memorized the track layout. Made things easier/faster.