Originally Posted by
obrentharris
Yes!
I went the other way around and raced my first season on a hard tail MTB. I had a good time, so I bought a used CX bike for the next season.
My advice to the OP is to ride whatever you already have or borrow an old MTB for your first couple of races. Find out if 'cross is your thing. There are significant numbers of riders who show up for one race and never come back.
Brent
Same. I got talked into trying CX by a friend who had been racing for a few years. Up to that point, I was either pure road biking, or pure MTB single track riding, and I had never done an actual bike race before. I did some training and a few races on my hardtail MTB (with regular 29er MTB tires) and was hooked.
I ended up buying a CX bike about halfway through that first season, but I was already looking for an excuse to buy a new bike at that point and the CX thing just worked. I ended up selling my MTB a few years later because it felt so heavy and slow in comparison, and eventually sold my road bike as well since it felt redundant.
This year, with no CX racing on the calender I've been using my CX race bike more as a road bike... so now I'm thinking of buying a pure road bike again.
