By Bill Bryant
The R-12, RUSA's year-round award for riding a 200k or longer randonneuring event for 12 consecutive months, seems to be spreading like wildfire.
At press time ten more laureates joined the list since our previous newsletter and more keep arriving each week.
Once primarily the domain of RUSA members from Texas and the Pacific Northwest, now R-12 riders are coming from all parts of the nation.
Among them, Ken Knutson is the first from the cycling hotbed of California.
Similarly, long-time RUSA Board member and Colorado RBA John Lee Ellis earned his too—no small feat when you consider those Rocky Mountain winters!
New R-12 states include Utah, Virginia, Florida, and Missouri.
Meanwhile, randonneuses Susan France (OR) and Brenda Barnell (TX) have kept the (friendly) rivalry going between the Lone Star state and the Emerald Empire by both earning their second R-12s!
In other R-12 news, there now is a handsome new medal to reward these randonneurs' tenacity: All present and past winners will be sent a freshly minted R-12 medal in the coming weeks to commemorate their impressive cycling achievement.
The program also has two new coordinators: Bert Lutz and John Kramer, both R-12 laureates themselves, have stepped up to assist other RUSA members who want to earn this honorific.
The ever-growing list of R-12 recipients and more information can be found at: http://www.rusa.org/r12.html.
Kramer, Lutz To Head Up R-12 Award Program
Bert Lutz of Oregon and John Kramer from Washington have stepped up and volunteered to handle the R-12 program.
Lutz and Kramer submitted these bios to American Randonneur:
• "John Kramer has been a randonneur for five years and was the sponsor of a super randonneur series in the Columbia River area of Oregon and Washington during the summer and fall of 2006. You may have heard the curse of the ghost randonneurs who started but never finished and who still wander the back roads of the Columbia River basin on moonlit nights looking for the overnight on the Big Lebowski. Or, you may have seen him somewhere in the middle of the pack on the Cascade 1200, Rocky Mountain 1200, Van Isle 1200, Gold Rush or Last Chance. Or maybe not...."
• "Bert Lutz started riding brevets as a result of a drunken night in a bar in Dallas. He was not smart enough to realize that he could change his mind and has been riding ever since. In the last three years, Bert has completed four SR series and volunteered on several brevets. Open water swimming is another passion and he swims the Columbia each year on Labor Day and has twice swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco."