No matter how fast Seth Demoor ran the Leadville Trail Heavy Half on Saturday, the course record was going to stay in the family.

The Buena Vista native cruised to a comfortable victory in the 15.4-mile out-and-back race, climbing from downtown Leadville to the 13,169-foot summit of Mosquito Pass and back in 1 hour, 52 minutes and 55 seconds. He finished just 52 seconds off the course record — set by his brother, Joe, in 2022.

“It was kind of close,” Seth Demoor said shortly after his victory, before official results were available.

“It’s been a few years — it should be broken,” added Joe Demoor, who won the Vail Mountain Winter Uphill in 2023 and teamed up with Vail’s John O’Neill this winter to win a U.S. Skimo national championship. “And if he breaks it, that would be sweet. I’d be stoked on that.” 

Seth Demoor spent most of his morning racing against the clock. The Lakewood runner grew his lead from about 200-meters at the 3-mile mark to almost four minutes by the top of Mosquito Pass. On the gravel descent through Leadville’s historic Mining District, Finnian Jacobson-Schulte maintained the gap to secure second (1:56:08) while holding off bronze medalist David Kennedy (1:56:57).

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“This was kind of a rust buster,” said Demoor, whose last race was an Olympic Trials qualifying attempt at the California International Marathon in December. “Just like, let it rip and see how the legs feel. And they felt good.”

While Demoor’s running resume includes two Pikes Peak Marathon victories and a sub-66 minute road half marathon, he’s perhaps most well known for his YouTube channel. For seven years, his daily vlog provided shoe reviews, race recaps and inspiration to all types of runners. Further, it offered a portal into the exuberant runner’s everyday life, the center of which is his wife, Brigid and the couple’s six kids. All were on hand to see Dad take the win.

“It’s everything,” he said of having his whole family along for the ride. “It doesn’t get better than this. Racing with a family and showing them how to work hard.” 

Over the first two and half years of the channel’s existence, Demoor managed to lure just 1,000 followers. Today, it boasts 172,000 subscribers, though Demoor has dialed back his content production to ‘just’ 2-3 videos a week.

“I was just ready for a change,” he said. “I’d been doing it for seven years hard and I was just ready for a break. But I still love it — doing it every day was just hard.”

Even at 39, Demoor hasn’t started to accept ‘PW’s’ — “personal worsts” — and isn’t done chasing ‘PB’s’ — “personal bests.”

“I’m not exactly a spring chicken, but I still feel good and I can still train hard,” he said. “And if you can train hard you can race hard.”

He’ll compete at the 45th-annual Kendall Mountain Run in Silverton next weekend and is gunning for the win at the Pikes Peak Ascent in September. He’s also planning to race with Joe at the World Mountain Running Association World Cup races in Italy in August.

“I’m not giving up and I still have a lot of big goals, even though I’m 39,” Seth Demoor said. “Even though you get a little older, you can still keep training hard and chasing down goals.”

“He’s my best friend. He’s been my coach, my mentor,” Joe Demoor said of his brother. “On the surface we’re different in some ways, but at the core, we’re very similar.”

As for the Heavy Half record? 

“Maybe we’ll both come after it next year,” Joe Demoor stated.

That would mean it’s probably going to stay in the family for at least another year.

“I know, I need to come back,” added Seth Demoor before his wife, standing by the stroller with the couples’ youngest two, got in the last word: “As long as a Demoor has it.”