Mountain bikes in 'cross races.
The organizers of my local cross series just announce that they will be allowing mountain bikes in the cross races instead of having a separate MTB category. I don’t know how I feel about this because I thought the whole point of using ‘cross bikes was not that they were the best tool for the job so much as that the best bike handling skills were rewarded more when nobody had suspension forks and fat tires. I’m torn about whether I’ll even bother to use a cross bike as I suspect a hardtail 26” MTB might actually be faster on most cross courses. I’ve never ridden my MTB on a cross course to find out, but it kind of feels like it isn’t really cross racing if everyone isn’t on skinny tires and drop bars. It seems that MTBs will become the bikes of choice for these races and they will become more like short circuit XC mountain bike races rather than ‘cross races. Has anybody ever done cross races with mountain bikes? How did it work out?