With the resumption of permanents on August 1 and events on September 1, members can now resume pursuing RUSA awards!

RUSA Cup, R-12, and P-12 are the only awards that aren't "business as usual".  These awards have special provisions to accommodate time lost during the event outage March - July and the perm outage from December, 2019 through July, 2020.

RUSA Cup - Your RUSA Cup has a one year extension (i.e., 3 years total) if your period to qualify includes part or all of 2020.  For example, if your first counting event was 6/15/2018, you now have through 6/14/2021 to qualify (rather than 6/14/2020).

R-12 / P-12 - For a series begun in any month from 1/2019 through 3/2020:

1. Your rides prior to 12/2019 must be in contiguous months.
2. In the period 12/2019 - 3/2020, you may count up to four rides (ridden in any of these months) as part of your 12-ride series .
3. In the period 4/2020 - 7/2020, no rides count.
4. You can resume your series in any month from 8/2020 through 1/2021. Once you have ridden a qualifying ride in one of those months, the subsequent counting months must be contiguous - no breaks - until completing your 12-ride series.

Example: Your streak started 9/2019, and you rode qualifying rides in 9/2019, 10/2019, 11/2019, and 2/2020 (but missed December and January).

• You now have 4 months in your series.
• If you resume in 9/2020, you now need 9/2020, 10/2020, 11/2020, 12/2020, 1/2021, 2/2021, 3/2021, and 4/2021 (8 more months, which must be contiguous).

RUSA will sanction brevets up to 325 km in length and populaires - no team events - for September. To organize these, a region:

• must have submitted a pandemic / virus plan for safely organizing events,
• must respect local guidelines and restrictions in how the events are run.

This is the next step forward following the successful reactivation of Permanent riding. Plans for October and later will be influenced on how September goes.

RUSA plans to reactivate the Permanents Program as of August 1, 2020. This means RUSA members will be able to register for the perms program, register to ride an active route, and submit the results beginning on this date.

More details on the Perms Rollout info page. Check this page for any change in the rollout timetable or other details!

Since making our decision for a soft reopening for July, the pandemic has taken a turn for the worse.  New cases in the US are up 65% over the past two weeks. New restrictions are being instituted including more restrictive social distancing, statewide mask requirements and new state regulations to mandate quarantining for interstate travel.  With all this in mind, our soft reopening will be postponed. 

We know that RBAs have put a lot of thought and effort into pandemic riding plans, and that you as riders have been looking forward to riding together on events again. We all hope that the picture will soon change for the better and we can put those plans into effect.  We will continue to monitor the pandemic and keep you updated.

Les Randonneurs Mondiaux has made an accommodation for the new Challenge Lepertel award in view of this year's COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent cancelling of many RM events. Here is the note on their Challenge Lepertel page.

COVID-19 Note: Many LRM events for 2020 have been canceled. The LRM board has made an adjustment to the award for riders whose first event came in 2019. Those riders need to complete four 1200km or longer events in at least three of the years 2019-2022. (For example - 2019, 2021, 2021, and 2022).

This means that if you rode a grand randonnée in 2019, and are aspiring to the Challenge Lepertel, and didn't complete one in 2020, you'll have to double up and ride two in 2021 or 2022 for your 2019 event to count.

The board has accepted the recommendation of RUSA's Pandemic Resource Committee for July.  We will publish more details next week, but in brief ...

Events calendared for July 1 or later with distances from 100 km to 225 km will be sanctioned, excluding Team Events (Darts and Dart Populaires). Some awards may remain unavailable - see details to follow.

RBAs who choose to run events will be submitting their plans for organizing and running safe events - including complying with local jurisdictions' requirements, travel considerations, etc. These plans will be shared among all RBAs.

Permanents are part of the plan but we still have much work to do.  Members are submitting routes for the library.  The web team is working on the new centralized program.  Routes are being reviewed; documentation is being written.  We don't have a go-live date yet.

The pandemic isn't over.  As we speak, cases are increasing in some US States.  We have to proceed cautiously - organizers and riders - to minimize risk to ourselves and our communities.   We hope that we can stay open and expand our offering in subsequent months but there is much beyond our control and we will continue to monitor the situation with respect to sanctioning future events.

Consult your local RBA for July calendaring plans and measures for safe registration and riding.

Events on hold for June; Stay tuned as Permanents will be coming back

Brevets and other events

Our hold on sanctioning events will extend at least through the end of June.

Most states are still experiencing community spread. Testing and tracing are not up to the standards promulgated by our national health organizations. Social distancing is still encouraged nationwide. While we can come up with ways to help keep our riders safe, running events can have an impact on communities whether that's through virus transmission or the risk of accidents. As a result, our Pandemic Response Committee has recommended that we extend the hold through the end of June.

The RUSA board has voted and accepted that recommendation.

From our website: Randonneuring is long-distance unsupported endurance cycling. This style of riding is non-competitive in nature, and self-sufficiency is paramount. When riders participate in randonneuring events, they are part of a long tradition that goes back to the beginning of the sport of cycling in France and Italy. Friendly camaraderie, not competition, is the hallmark of randonneuring.

As a riding community, we have shared goals and awards recognizing our achievements. It's the camaraderie that makes us a club. When we open, it should be nationwide. That doesn't mean that every RBA will be forced to run events but they should have the ability to do so, working with their local riders. Opening now, on a geographical piecemeal basis, with a heavy emphasis on solo riding, would be abandoning much of what makes up our sport.

Permanents and Insurance

We have some good news to share! Effective May 1, we have a new insurance program that includes permanents. However, it's not a simple matter of flipping a switch. We have work ahead of us - Deb Banks, John Lee Ellis and Crista Borras are working as a committee on the details of the revised program. We have major system changes to make and organizational work to do. Crista, John Lee and Deb will be reaching out to existing route owners to get the organizational work underway in parallel with our web team work.

A restart of permanents will be incorporated into the recommendations from our Pandemic Response Committee. More details on insurance and any required changes will be shared before we reopen any RUSA riding. Stay tuned!

July and Forward

By mid-June at the latest, we expect to provide an update for July. The Pandemic Committee has also started to think about the guidance and support that we might provide to RBAs and riders as we build our reopen plan.

Because there will be several months this year without RUSA sanctioned events, for any RUSA Cup effort in progress at the time events were put on hold, you will have three years to achieve the RUSA Cup rather than two.

For example, if your first qualifying event was on 1/1/2019, you now have through 12/31/2021 to complete. If your first qualifying event was on 2/1/2020, you now have through 1/31/2022 to complete.

Our hold on sanctioning events will extend at least through the end of May. 

Given where the country is now, on the leading edge of this pandemic, social distancing encouraged until at least the end of April and all but 8 states (as of this writing) with stay-at-home orders, and all 50 states in a disaster declaration, our Pandemic Response Committee has recommended that we extend the hold through the end of May. 

The RUSA board has voted and accepted that recommendation.

We understand that solo and small group riding is still occurring in some states where encouraged or permitted by law, but none of that will be for RUSA, ACP, LRM credit or covered by RUSA insurance, until we resume sanctioning events.

By mid May, we expect to provide guidance for June. 

Dave Thompson, for the RUSA Board.

April 14, 2020

Just a few days ago, on March 21, we told members that we weren't shutting down nationally but we said that could change any day. Since then, things have quickly gone downhill. The US confirmed cases have increased ten-fold and surpassed China. Our European and English speaking brethren worldwide have shut down, including Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. In much of Europe, not even solo riding is allowed other than utility cycling.

While not every state or county in the US has declared "stay at home" orders, we are heading that way. Testing has ramped up, giving us a better picture of community spread, but it's still incomplete. Too many are being monitored, test results unconfirmed.

So, with concern for our members, their families and communities, we started contacting RBAs one by one who still had rides on the calendar for April.  While every RBA was being ultra careful, the Board felt that those rides needed to be cancelled. At this point, we have nothing on the calendar for April. There is a small handful of rides taking place this weekend; but April is cleared.  

At this time we aren't sure about May. Rides are still on the calendar. The Board did not want this to be "closed until further notice", rather we'd see where this was headed, whether things were starting to level off. In densely populated areas, we do not expect the virus to have peaked in April. We need to develop a reopen strategy, perhaps starting out with short populaires that won't require either support or replenishment stops. If and when we approach this decision, it will probably be with travel and rider count restrictions. We want riders to feel safe and comfortable, and the Board wants your support and agreement that it's the right thing to do. We will be setting up a small board-led committee of RBAs to monitor and recommend a reopen strategy.
 
The RUSA Board