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I swear to god right that there's some people that ride for hours on their mountain bikes without stopping.. God... what is they do???... Ummm I think they pay to enter some sort of thingywotsit. Oh. I don't know.
What I mean is there seems to be a lot of characterization of road vs mtb. There's nothing stopping you from riding with a consistent pace on the MTB other than technical trails - but technical trails aren't they be-all and end-all of MTB. Actuall cross country is allowed, where you ride from a to b to c and back, and cover a large area rather than a small tightly packed area. Wind can have more impact on the MTB than road on a road bike (not that I have one).
From my doorstep I'd say a 60 mile mostly off-road MTB ride with road links would be equivalent to 100 miles pure road.
If I want to go out Solo I can do a 20-40km loop from the door with good 1000-1500m of climbing, sort of loop on your own you can hit at a good solid pace, stopped to take a pic or 2 and that was it. Plenty of technical trails in it just keep riding. Group times always vary.
As for skills, it actually takes some to ride a road bike quickly, once the roads get twisty etc you need to be able to keep the pace up, being able to carry momentum also wins out.
In general I could probably pick a route that would give me the win on a MTB by being a bit of a dick about it, much harder to do that on a road bike unless you put in a hugely demoralising section of flat headwind or rely on a killer final 1/3 for when plucky MTB rider has gone out a little hard.
When it comes to races it's easy to spot the "roadie does MTB" normally as you catch them up after a while and wonder why they are all track standing in the singletrack.... Others who ride both are some of the faster ones and generally bank the long cardio work with good tech skills to destroy the rest of us.
Anyway just get on with it have your fun race and see what happens