Continental RaceKings are pretty good on pavement, pretty good on dirt, not much good on mud. Maxxis Crossmark a little better on dirt, not quite as good on pavement.
12 speeds wasn't a concern, the big gaps between gears was. Going from 11-50 to 11-32 gave me a lot of 1 tooth jumps so it is easy to maintain cadence. If the 11-32 was available in 12 speed I would have bought it and saved a lot of work and $$. ;)
Joe Rocket has some trousers with armour (silly people, they call them pants with armor). They are made for motorcycling and may be a bit much but some have stretchy parts and may work.
Win? Maybe not. Place well? Possibly. Maybe not a eMTB but a Creo or Vado SL with their 28 mph limit. If we can do 160 watts for an hour and the bike adds 240 we are at pro level power. Bradley Wiggins set his hour record with 440 watts.
The engineers at the factory do a lot of testing and found that too little torque = part comes loose; too much = broken part. I would not take my bike to a shop that uses an adjustable spanner on a part that specifies a torque.