I raced this last year.  Lots of fun.  Trail is technical, with a lot of gravel road climbing.  Most of the techincal single track is downhill.  It was somewhat brutal though so the name is misleading.  Essentially it's the Swank 65 minus Farlough Gap.  In my opinion, it would be a good first long distance race.

I wouldn't reccomend it as a first, only because of the leaf cover that time of year.  The trails are buried in it, and there's a whole lot of techincal you can't see going on under there.

I ran this last year.  My first race in Pisgah.

I had an absolute blast.  Although Dick is right, there are some leafy sections, particularly the last run back down Cove Creek into the campground.  Up Cove Creek at the beginning wasn't bad because, well, you're going uphill and slower.  Blasting back down Cove Creek at the end got a bit dodgy a couple times, particularly because I was pretty spent by that point, but use some common sense and all is fine.

IMHO Blue Ridge puts on an A+ show.  If anything, you could run it like you were just on a long ride in Pisgah, with supported rest stops and a nice meal and beer at the end, and totally forget about the race part.  If you've never ridden out there, I would recommend that you spend a day pre-riding, and get the GPS info from someone or get the Avenza deal.  When we pre-rode the route, we got pretty lost trying to get to the intersection of Butter Gap and Art Loeb.  Just keep going left… we eventually found it!  On race day, it is so well marked that you won't have an issue.

For a fitness mark… I typically have no problem running a full lap of LNSP in about 2:40, and I had no problems at this race.  I barely missed my goal of 4:30.

I am doing ORAMM and Swank this year.

The race was really fun, one of the best times I had on a bike last year. If you aren't in it to win it, do like the others suggest above and just do it for the fun, which is what I did. It was really leaf covered, but I think that may have actually helped me on some of those downhills as I couldn't see what lurked beneath! It was a great way to end my "race" season 

The course markings were excellent except for one sign that fell down and managed to get about 15 of us going in the wrong direction. It was quickly fixed though.

I am debating whether to do it again, or do Swank.

Thanks for all the thoughts and opinions!!  I thought about doing the Jerdon Mountain Challenge and biked the course last year and liked it but it conflicted with 24 Hours of Booty which I already signed up for.  I thought The Couch Potato would be the next best thing.  And it would definitely be for fun (though some would question that idea of fun  ) 

Would you say that Cove Creek was really the technical part of the race or are there other areas that are more technical?

Agree with Dick - upper Butter and Daniel Ridge would be the tricky bits.

But those parts didn't have any leaf problems that I recall.  For Cove Creek, I was just really talking about the leaves.  Sorry for the confusion.