That's the thing... anyone at the front of the peloton will certainly be capable of riding faster than the wind, but the riders behind them are going to be blocking some of the tailwind. At some point, the difference between the wind speed and the peloton speed is going to mean that the guys at the front of the peloton might actually be going slower than what they could achieve if they didn't have all those people behind them.

Even if the work of being in the lead was shared, I'm wondering at what point a strong tailwind means a peloton is just useless. We're going to be getting 40-60 km/h winds right at our backs the whole way.

For this race, it might be pretty moot, since most of us are going to be limited by gearing on our cyclocross and mountain bikes, anyways (90 rpm in top gear on my bike = 45km/h). I'm halfway tempted to pull out my road bike