Starting February 1, 2024, gravel credit and timing will apply to permanents with unpaved portions! Relaxed timing should open up new terrain and gnarlier routes should become accessible to a wider variety of riders.
Gravel Timing
An extra minute is allowed to complete a route for every kilometer of gravel. The extra time allowance is computed by adding up all the gravel segments in a route, then dropping any fractional kilometer. (Ride with GPS displays the summary unpaved distance.) For example, at the minimum average speed of 15 kph, a 200 km route has a basic time allowance of 4 min/km, or 800 minutes. If the route has gravel segments of 20.6 km and 2.2 km, the sum is 22.8 km. Thus the extra time is 22 minutes. The total time limit is 822 minutes or 13 hours 42 minutes. This is the same rule that has been used for RUSA gravel brevets and populaires.
RUSA’s RwGPS routes contain the overall time limit in the final cue. Presently the time limit is based on 4 min/km. After Feb 1 the volunteers will begin updating gravel routes with the extra time allowance. It will take some time to work through all the routes. If you are unsure whether a time limit has been updated, you can check it yourself with the method described above.
RUSA’s results logger, where you enter your elapsed time, has been updated with gravel distances. It will know the correct time limit regardless of whether the time limit in the RwGPS route has been updated.
Gravel Credit
Gravel permanent kilometers will be tracked in your results and apply toward gravel awards.
Checking for Gravel
To check whether a route is a gravel route, use the Permanents Search function at rusa.org > Permanents > Search. The results will list unpaved distance. For example, searching WA routes of 100-199 km gives:
Baked Goods and Cle Elum-Hyak-Cle Elum contain unpaved distance, so you would get gravel credit and timing for riding them.
A route is a gravel route only if the RUSA database says so!
RwGPS might say a route has unpaved distance yet RUSA does not show any unpaved distance. Reasons could be:
- The route was overlooked and needs to be updated as a gravel route.
- The route is known to be entirely paved. RwGPS’ surface-type data is flawed and has not been corrected.
Gravel Errors
Surface-type information comes from the crowd-sourced Open Street Map project. Surface-type data is missing or incorrect for some roads, leading to errors in unpaved distance. If you notice errors when riding, such as unmapped unpaved segments, or incorrect unpaved distance, you can report errors with the form at rusa.org > Permanents > Permanent Route Update Request. (If you’re really dedicated, you can also correct OpenStreetMap yourself. Then routes created in the future will have the right surface type.)