unterhausen

It doesn't surprise me, the people that say randonneuring is not a race have won control. It's in the RUSA handbook. I can respect that viewpoint, but if it's not a race why are there time limits? I don't think it should be more like a race, but fast times are definitely celebrated. OTOH, the organizers of PBP were so disgusted by the fast people one year they threatened not to publish the top results. But I'm not sure they ever did that, you can find the fastest riders listed, and not just in the big book. I thought they had a ceremony for the top riders as well.

I don't think there ever will be a RUSA SR reward. They don't tend to have overlap in awards. Since almost all of the 300+ km rides are ACP, the overlap would be almost 100%. They aren't likely to make an award that is won by only one or two people in a given year like would happen if it only counted non ACP rides. Their criteria for awards is something that is interesting to a lot of people and gets them to ride more. Note that they have never accepted Jan Heine's awards. I imagine they would if there were more people earning his awards, even though they are performance based. I don't think anyone wants them to accept the Adrian Hands award, even though almost everyone wants to be in that exclusive club. It's also PBP based.

They could have the Unterhausen award for the person that does an SR series with less than an hour time in hand left at the end total for the series. Or as someone asked me when I finished a 400k with less than 15 minutes left, "why the rush?" The year before, I finished 2 600k, one with 5 minutes left and one with zero minutes left. I don't recommend it.