i think you can pull it off easily if you actually ride one of the seahorses, i've never tried though, i didn't find out that you could ride them until after i beat the race
personally, i used hot soup and beast form, got in about 1:26 i think.
supposedly you can use spirit form since it stops time, but i could never pull it off like that, it's just so much work to memorize the exact distance you could travel like that, and i didn't know about the shortcuts for changing forms