1. On the water temperature, 18-19c is a fair guess. Many lakes in the area are close to 20c at the moment so you’ll be fine. Wind is the one having a bigger impact as it can mix some colder water to the warmer surface water.

3. Try it if you are there! It’s cool and you can even see some summer ski jumping if you are lucky.

4. Low on traffic and definetly test it, because it is a nice loop. Atleast for europeans it is not any more tecnical than normal triathlon bike loops.

OK I will try to see if I can get to this pool. Mabe do the Phelps approved mandatory 200IM, 400IM, 200 fly warmup in this pool haha



Glad to see the the lake temp is not in the sub 15C range.

If you're on Facebook, this group has some useful answers and tips. It's easy to join : https://www.facebook.com/groups/2979159605693038

1. Water temperature probably c.20 celsius
2. Will be packing a light gilet and gloves for the bike
3. Apparently this pool is super busy (according to some posts on the facebook group again)
5. From the facebook group, looks like the uphill is pretty steep on the run
7. If it actually rains on Saturday for women's race, I'll be watching from the hotel room ;)

Hope this helps!

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It doesn't get easier, you just get slower
https://mymsracesironman.home.blog/

Well, I went for a swim in that pool next door to transition by the ski jumps. Must have been the most amazing swimming experience I have ever had (although I am biased being a cross country skier too).

What are the thoughts on race day parking. I don't even know where to start in terms of where to get parking and walk to transition (my other option is take a shuttle bus from east of Lahti. They have some buses from the Pajulahti Olympic training center where I am staying, which I assume may be best.

I am glad I rented a car as I had to drive back to Helskinki and back today as my bike missed the connection to Helsinki from Frankfurt, but Lufthansa, essentially got the bike to Finland 13 hrs later. That was pretty good service. They offered to deliver it within 48 hrs but I did not want to take a chance it would be late.

Also hats off to Andrew Messick. I was getting in line for registration, and my phone was dead so I could not get my QRcode. So Messick grabs me and takes me over to their office nearby, and chats with me about this event vs some of the other 70.3 Worlds venues.

I’m told water temp today was 19.3C. But you probably know that it you’re there already. Thanks for the heads-up about potential race-day parking difficulties. I don’t get there until tomorrow but will make figuring that out a priority now!

The 11:14 Z train from Lahti to Helsinki is absolutely jammed with bikes. Bikes upon bikes upon bikes.

The train is so jammed with bikes that the driver can't get through and he has to climb over all the bikes

Airport is a disaster too. I called Delta weeks ago to ensure I had a bike reservation and after being on hold for 20 min while they researched it, they said it wasn't necessary.

How can the US airlines be so dumb to realize EU airlines can turn you away if you don't have one?

So I called the EU side of my connections to ensure I was on the list. Many stressed people being turned away from the counter and told to figure out their bike transport on their own. Would be good for IM to remind people to contact the final carrier they need a bike reservation if travelling in many cases.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm flying out tomorrow with Air Canada who said it also wasn't necessary. With the extra day we're spending in Helsinki, hopefully the pressure should be off but I'm going to call Scandinavian Airlines for my EU leg just to check.

Thanks for the heads up. I booked on Finnair tonight at 9pm to Brussels and I am there till Thursday. I guess my challenge is going to be if my bike can arrive on Tue or Wed in Brussels because I am flying air Canada on a different ticket on Thursday.

I can imagine getting 6000 bikes out of here between Sunday-Mon-Tue is a lot worse than 6000 bikes coming in Mon-Fri before the races. Thanks for the heads up. I may just go to airport 4 hrs early as I have time to kill. It looks like Finnair has 3x flights per day to Brussels but that's barely 100 bikes per day even if they put 33 on each flight so hopefully Brussels is not one of the top connectors out of here (I would imagine that getting a bike on a Frankfurt, Munich or London flight has more traffic given they are larger hubs and German and UK athletes are numerous)

Just a general reply. This evening was pretty relaxed getting bike checked into Finnair and then boarding was clear sailing but now we are stuck on tarmac because the airport has run out of luggage handlers. I can imagine there is a human limit to home many of these massive overweight boxes can be moved in a day and at some point the guys/gals loading these mobile tank cases just need a break

From the sounds of things, they just ran out of bike loading capacity. I had a friend in Canada who arrived with no bike, checked in yesterday at Helsinki at 7 am for a 10 am flight out through Copenhagen, and nothing arrived. That was telling, as I checked in around 5:30 pm for a 9pm flight to Brussels that was delayed by an hour due to lack of baggage handlers and as soon as I got to Brussels, I got the text message from Finnair saying my bike case was not loaded.

In a way this is weird for an airport with the capacity of Helsinki. It is not a tiny "village" airport like Kona, and should be able to handle 2x the bike capacity, but perhaps Kona union rules of how many pounds of baggage can be moved per hour and Helsinki are different animals. In fairness, there is only so much that humans can move. I would imagine all of this also needs to go thru the giant Xray machine which itself may be bottleneck. In Canada most airports, they make us literally manually open up the bike cases and inspect everything before it gets on the belt (a massive pain in the butt, but once that is done it is clearly sailing thru the aircraft onboarding system).

This morning on the 10am to Copenhagen, just about everyone had bikes and it looked like they were having trouble just serving everyone at the check in counter - usually most people can self serve but when everyone has an oversized/special item, it queues up quickly.

My wife managed to get us through smoothly by noting that Air Canada had reserved us a bike spot in advance (which was true), but I can't imagine everyone got their bikes on board.

My friends from Cornwall were on the exact 10 am flight yesterday from Helsinki-Copenhagen-Montreal. Bikes never left Helsinki and they too had bike "slots" reserved on the plane. It made no difference because the problem was it never made it from conveyor belt to baggage truck to airplane, and the same happened last night at 10 pm.

Maybe in the likes of Kona they have 40 years of experience dealing with that, but in Helsinki, this is abnormal, so their process and capacity is not set up for that. In any case if you are going straight home you will get your stuff delivered to your place. I have a tiny 48 hrs window in Brussels to get it delivered to a hotel, if not I am swimming the 90km in 11 days at Demi Esprit LOL

 iam no expert but i was told by one that airbus planes have a complicated loading system which does not work well for big luggage .
finnair and sas is predomenately airbus .

On Monday, this thread freaked me out that I did not have a bike reservation on my KLM flight. I had booked through Delta, which of course accepts bikes without reservation, and didn’t provide any notice about the requirements.

I contacted KLM and Delta, and was told that they would enter a request for a reservation, but one would not be confirmed by Tuesday’s flight. Not wanting to be denied on Tuesday, I went to Helsinki Airport a day early to talk to a counter rep from KLM. He promised the bike would be ok.

I’m glad I did this, because they were denying bikes to others on the flight. The scene on Monday was insane. Tuesday was tame by comparison.

If IM people observe threads like this, it would be good to notify the next host city airport of this phenomenon.

My guess here is this is more of an airport authority/Swissport thing than airline thing. Perhaps Finnair has its own ground staff, but all the other airlines, tend to use services providers like Swissport/Dnata etc as they can't have their own staff in every airport they fly to.

Sure the airline, may have limited cargo space on flights, but then the airline has cargo space and the cargo does not get uploaded due to staff limitations, then its the latter that is the problem. Every year, the tiny village like airport on Kona largely gets this done but as mentioned above they had 40 years to grow with the race. In Helsinki it was a one shot deal, but the airport is still pretty darn large, so it feels like labour to load luggage is the limitation.

Next year for New Zealand, I would imagine most people flying in from international will land in Auckland and drive, but again, the day after the race will be similar in scope....5000 bikes trying to get out of there in 2ish days. I don't recall any issues getting the 5000 bikes out of Vegas last year.

Not having ever flown with my bike, I am probably the last authority on this topic, but my gut tells me 5k bikes did not leave out of St. George and/or Vegas last year. Americans are a large contingent at any WC and St. George is in the backyard of a lot of people - driveable from the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Arizona, even Denver/Boulder metro area. Maybe also Vegas is extra prepped for odd-size luggage (golf clubs etc.).

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

It may also just be that people from all over stayed around in Vegas lessening the load. The US people driving to Vegas would barely be 500-1000 out of the entire field so you still have 4000 to ship out our Vegas. On the other hand Lahti timing was weekend before back to school for much of the world and most had to fly in so everyone getting out at the same time.

In any case Finnair seems to have lost my gear (they have no idea where it is) so I may just have to upgrade my 10-15 year old gear. My speed does not warrant any upgrades but if I have nothing to race on may just need to go shopping but I only have 10 days before Esprit half Ironman in Montreal so may just need to swim the swim and bike leg lol

I recall in several FB groups that few people who flew out of St George had posted on the FB group pages there were issues getting their bikes due to the airport size and plane size at that airport.

But not many flew into StG because of the costs. Vegas was the most common airport by far. There were also likely more people staying over a little longer for the national park tours that spread the departures out.

The big issue is really EU airline policy. I've never seen airlines turning away people from their flight. I saw a woman a head of me with a first class ticket being told she can't check in her bike, period. Those tickets ain't cheap....

EU customer experience and service in general is very lacking.

Related tangent, we pulled a last minute audible with our hotel and didn't even use it for 2 days and unfortunately stayed away from Lahti the entire time except for event night after hearing how the AC didn't work in most rooms (as we found out...my room had the heater jammed in the on position as well) and the windows were locked shut. The hotel had no answers.

Fortunately we had overlapping reservations outside the city in a lakeside place... but I would have loved to enjoy the city and the event vibe a little.

Back to the bikes, they airport was not taken completely by surprise as they did have some signs up and specific bike lines.

The initial issue I think was the panic induced from at least some people being turned away and then after that it's pretty crazy they haven't solved the issues and just routed the bikes out of there.

Options aren't really great. Leaving a few days or a week out after the event isn't usually possible when you often need to fly in nearly a week before the event to ensure your gear makes it in time.
Tribike transport acrross the ocean is not always the best option as when I sent my bike to Hawaii, it was an OK experience (lost bike parts that took awhile to get back) and I was out of a bike for a few weeks on either end. So it's basically like you factor in your bag getting delayed anyway on either end with the mostly guarantee that makes and leaves the event.

I flew Finnair with my bike twice. Both times they lost my bike.
Recovered later (first time took them about a week, second about 5 days).

They are just horrible with oversize luggage.

OK good to know (as I fly back from Europe to Canada....my browser is on all kinds of bike websites to replace the decade old replacement P3 with ultegra mechanical and rim brakes, 12 year old wetsuit and equivalently old race wheels, and 2007 Giro Advantage2 Norman Stadler Kona 2006 replica helmet). If it shows up in less than 9 days, that's probably faster than going shopping and getting gear in time for the Demi Esprit (half Ironman) on the formula 1 track in Montreal. Hoping to have a proper bike split (vs Lahti Hypothermia) and dive below 5 hrs before I formally turn 58 and I would rather do it on old tech so I can compare with my past times (vs get the cutting edge stuff and buy my way to sub 5....I know, I should just buy speed)

If you are going to fly with your gear to a race, get AirTags. It’s great peace of mind to track the bike as you are going to and from.

Some airlines like Lufthansa ban them, but whatever.

Anecdotally, it appears Bikes have been a major problem for Finnair. I flew through Seattle and only about 50% of people received their bikes. I was one of 10 people in line missing bikes. Most, including myself, had AirTags which showed bags still in Helsinki. My bike bag hasn't moved for 36 hours.

I checked in 6 hours early and flew Business, but that doesn't appear to have helped. Also, FYI, you need to file the claim through your final carrier. In my case since my final leg was on Alaska from Seattle to SFO, my claim had to filed (in person) with Alaska at SFO even though Finnair has my bike in Finland.

Finnair came to life today, and on my report said "we found your bike in Helsinki". It looks like it is tagged on a flight to the original destination to Brussels (based on flight code), but it says it is going from "Hel---->Hel" which is marginally amusing if you add an extra "l" to each of the above!!! Meanwhile I have arrived in Ottawa Canada where I live, and in the portal I chose that as final destination for delivery.