A gentle reminder

[Rob Hawks]

Please forgive the cross posting. I am hoping to get this out to as wide an audience as possible.

For a fairly large segment of RUSA membership, there are a number of people who are quite focused on qualifying and registering for PBP. Personally, PBP means a great deal to me and I too am focused on qualifying so I want to see everything work well. Please note that both Randonneurs USA (RUSA) and Audax Club Parisien (ACP) are *volunteer* organizations. Your regional brevet administrator (RBA), who is the visible face of RUSA, is not getting paid to run brevets in your region. I just double checked, and sure enough I was right. No one is getting rich being an RBA.

At this time of year especially, RBAs are doing a great deal of work designing routes, reviewing existing routes, hosting brevets, managing waivers, preparing start control rosters, checking riders in, herding cats to collect proof of passage and finding volunteers to help put on quality events. Right now, they might be contending with riders that need just one more qualifier and are super eager to see their results show up on the RUSA website.

A lot of work goes on behind the scenes before those results show up on the website. The RBA has to review proof of passage, then submit the results to RUSA. RUSA requires the RBA to complete that step within 7 days of the conclusion of the event but there are good reasons why those results don't show up on the RUSA website a few hours after the event is over.. RUSA volunteers then need to review all the submissions to prepare files to send over to the ACP, retrieve certificate numbers and upload those into the RUSA website. There is a team of volunteers who are making sure all the website functions do just that: function. There is also volunteers who process membership applications and renewals so that riders are cleared to participate on brevets, and a team of volunteers who review the routes to make sure they are up to standards (and there is always a queue of routes to review).

On the ACP side of things, imagine having your usual workload increase because worldwide there are more countries putting on more events in order for riders to qualify at the same time as putting on an event for 8,000 people. Keep in mind, the ACP is not a very large club and is just that, a club and not a business.

Please, if something unexpected has happened and you find yourself irked or worse, feel free to compose a very strident email, giving vent to all your frustrations. And then delete that and write a message to hopefully correct your situation where the audience intended is one or more people who have, and will continue to give up their free time to make RUSA run so that you have brevets to ride. There is a volunteer with RUSA that will help you with your concern.

rob hawks

CA: San Francisco RBA

RUSA membership team member

RUSA Brevet Coordinator

RUSA RBA Liaison