Election of Board of Directors and RBA Liaison take place from November 1st to December 15th. Please visit this year's Election Page to learn about the candidates and vote if you are an active member. Contact Dave Thompson at election@rusa.org with any questions you may have.

Members may vote for Board of Directors candidates and RBAs may vote for their RBA Liaison. RUSA sincerely thanks all of those who have stepped up to stand for election this year.

For October, RUSA is sanctioning events and perms up to a nominal 600 km in distance, excluding team events (Darts, Arrows, Flèches). For example, a 615 km Super Randonnée 600 perm route or an ACP 600k brevet using a 610 km route would be ok. This is up from a 325 km limit in September.

As before, 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.

The RUSA Store and Awards Committee report ...

• The Store has a few 2019-edition Super Randonneur medals for sale.

• We will soon be sending applications for the Randonneur 5000 and Randonneur 10000 awards to the ACP. 

Two positions on the RUSA Board of Directors will become available at the end of the year.  The terms of Capn John Ende and Lois Springsteen are expiring.  They are both eligible for re-election.

Members may nominate up to two current RUSA members to run for those two positions.

Additionally, RBAs may nominate an RBA for the position of RBA Liaison. NY: Central/Western RBA Peter Dusel currently holds this position and is eligible for re-election.

A nomination form can be found on-line here.  

Email nominations to election@rusa.org or mail the form to:

Lois Springsteen
226 West Avenue
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Nominations must be received by October 15, 2020

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.