This question is a bit out there, but say we are doing a distance range filter like

(distance1...distance2)

, is there a way we could recursively try to find records outside of this range until we get a result, and maintain a single search call out of it?

It's not possible to do this in a single API call. But may be you could try a "binary search" approach to increasing the range slowly, so you can minimize the number of searches needed