Well I did the shorter version of Moors and Shores and it was good!
Due to a course change it turned out to be 38 miles offroad out of 47 total with a rather chewy offroad climb at the end which had apparently been done on a metalled road last year.
I rode it on my Jake the Snake with Schwalbe X-One allrounds and tubes, being too tight to buy the tubeless version. I'm not sure that was a good choice and I was rolling on 50PSI after a Rock/Tyre/Pinch Flat issue on 40PSI the previous week. I certainly felt the bumps and had to take it very slowly on the offroad down hill sections. On some single track it was a bit embarassing and I felt like a tractor on the motorway with a large queue of MTBs behind me. Had I been back down at 40PSI I think I would have enjoyed the whole thing a lot more.
Has anyone fitted a dropper post to a CX Bike?
Some of the single track was quite technical and slippy, remounting was tricky. On the other hand, going uphill I was passing MTBs all the time both on and off road and the tyres rolled extremely well on the tarmac.
There were two feed stops on our route, one mini stop at the route split that supplied water, bars and gels and the lunch stop which had a huge array of carbs from flapjacks to Jaffa Cakes as well as sandwiches. There was loads to eat, and then a huge hill just afterwards. ouch. Singange was excellent, the GPX was accurate and overall I was very pleased. Now I just need to recover!
Oh, I also overhead that 1200 riders had pre-booked and registration was still open on the day.