Checking the title of this thread, I think it actually may be my Spidey sense making my skin crawl when I get too close to one of you

Nah, actually, I'm betting it's a combination of things.
The timer seems to be WAY too fast, like it's counting almost a second and a half to two seconds for every second of actual time (you prolly THINK it's accurate because it gets going the way it does); it DOES have to do with "being in the zone" (check the pic below - it hit me all of a sudden), and it seems to me, IIRC, that I was essentially just doing a small-ish figure 8 when I got to a certain point when getting this latest time.
And I found out this works better to start with:
straight down
upper left until the skinny long one is headed your way
lower left
middle and figure eights and other evasive moves