I'm looking to get an endurance road bike that I hope to use for CX racing, but for winter (rainy) training, and commuting as well. What I'm looking at is a Felt VR5, which has disc brakes, thru-axles, and what look to be reasonably beefy wheels. How bad will it be to race cross on this bike? Really I'm looking to go this route instead of a CX bike is for the fender eyelets, which I'm assuming I could also use to mount a rack for commuting.
One big question I haven't answered yet is how big of tires can it take, (chainstay length is 417mm, compared with 430mm on thier cross bikes and 407 on the road).
Thoughts on this approach?
Edit: I should mention that I plan to race 4-6 CX races a year, mostly weeknight series.
Thanks.
A buddy of mine used one of these for a season and the biggest issue was that the stock front derailleur would rub on a 35mm CX tire (short chainstays), especially under load. You can see on their website how close it sits to the stock 28's. Going 1X or using the newer generation of Shimano FD's should mitigate this. Felt lists the fork length as 380 which should be ok as long as it doesn't get too muddy.