"Ironman Alaska"

Many Ironman Alaska athletes are scrambling after Alaska Airlines notified them that bicycles shipped through them may not arrive in time for the triathlon in Juneau, which is less than two weeks away.

In an email to customers on Tuesday, Alaska Airlines said that applies to bikes checked as baggage or shipped by Alaska Air Cargo. The airline steered athletes to the Ironman organization to find other shipping options.

Suzanne Rinehart is a college administrator in the Chicago area who’s been doing Ironman races for a decade. Now 51, she said she was looking forward to doing her last, full-length Ironman in Alaska.

“I invested a lot of training — it’s a little frustrating to think of all the training I put in,” she said. “And now I’m this close, and then everything kind of raveled and fell apart at the last minute.”

After she got the email from Alaska Airlines, she looked into last-minute couriers. The options are limited and expensive. Some require disassembling the bike. Alaska Airlines offered her an earlier flight to Juneau to beat the rush, but that would mean spending a lot more on accommodations, taking more time off work, plus extra headaches coordinating with her travel companion.

So she decided to cancel her whole trip.

“The bike thing was the last straw for me,” she said.

Mike Arabia is still headed to the race from southern California. He said he got quotes to ship his bike into Juneau through UPS and FedEx for around $1,000. But he was able to get an assurance in writing from an Alaska Airlines agent that his bike would arrive by Aug. 5 — two days before the race.

“I’m going to have to cross my fingers and hope that this agent that I chatted with … is correct,” he said. “And that my bike makes it there before race day.”

Like Rinehart, Arabia’s unhappy about the last-minute communication for a foreseeable problem. It’s too late now, but affordable, third-party options for shipping bikes are available with more notice.

“Shame on Ironman. Shame on Alaska Airlines for not coordinating early,” he said.

Ironman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Alaska Airlines said they’ve been communicating with the Ironman organization for the last year with a goal of getting important travel information to athletes. The airline said its email to customers about bike capacity was a backstop, “in the event they had not heard from the Ironman organization.”

Other athletes do appear to be opting for some of those expensive shipping options. Ken Hill owns the shop Juneau Bike Doctor. He saw a thread about the bike issue  on Facebook and offered up his shop as a shipping destination and storage spot for athletes sending bikes ahead of their flights.

“The phone’s been going crazy and our Facebook messages as well,” he said. “I literally can’t step away from my computer without it piling up.”

Within 24 hours, he said 30 to 40 people took him up on the offer. He said he expects bikes to start showing up on Monday.

Travel Juneau, Juneau’s destination marketing organization, has been working closely with the race organizers. Executive Director Liz Perry said the race organizers and airline are working together to smooth things out.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Alaska Airlines did not respond to a request for comment. The reporter failed to make a request.

 

There are around 1,500 participants signed up for the Ironman Alaska race in Juneau this August. Racers usually bring a few three to five support people, and so for about a week this summer, there will be few thousand people in need of housing.

The city has about 1,300 rooms in its hotels, inns and bed & breakfasts. So, to add capacity, TravelJuneau, the destination marketing organization for the city, came up with a plan to incentivize Juneau residents to go on vacation and rent their homes to athletes for a week. 

One athlete, Michael Bissell, says that he was late to the game when looking for a place to stay, but he got something arranged fairly painlessly. 

“I was looking at hotels for about two weeks,” Bissell said. “And after no luck there — like, seriously, none — I started on a Facebook page.”

The Facebook page for Ironman Alaska has an accommodation thread with over 700 comments.

“And then within 30 seconds, 30 minutes, I had two people who have messaged me already,” Bissell said. “It just took a couple of days to see what was best for me and my crew that was coming out.”

His crew is his mom, his brother and a friend. They’re paying $1,000 a night for four nights, and he’s still hoping his crew will help him with that. 

The comments on the Facebook thread started back in October, with people mostly looking for housing in Juneau during the race. 

In January, there were a lot of discouraged commenters saying that they were really struggling to find a place to stay. Shortly after, more and more renters began commenting on those comments, offering places to stay. 

Since then, there have been more comments posting places to stay than those seeking.  However, there are still some complaining about prices.

One comment reads: “Very frustrated that the only places I’ve found so far are 5 to 6 times more expensive than they are the week before or after… Figures people would cash in, but I can’t afford to pay $5,000 a week for an Airbnb studio…”

One of the Ironman Alaska Facebook page’s admins replied: “There’s making the most of a situation and then basically ripping people off. Sounds like that falls into the latter.”

Kara Tetley, with Travel Juneau, said that Ironman considered a lot of variables before settling on Juneau as its first Alaska race location, including hotel capacity.

“They came and they visited a couple of times,” Tetley said. “Different members of the Ironman staff would come in and kind of look at things.”

Travel Juneau has a page on their Ironman site telling Juneau residents how to register their businesses and how to qualify for a discount with Alaska Airlines for that week if they do.

Tetley said that the demand for housing during the event seems to have been quelled.

“From what we can understand, there was some concern in the beginning, just because they kind of wanted to get everything settled right away,” Tetley said. “But it’s really quieted down, and it seems like a lot of athletes are set up or not as concerned about that anymore.”

City and Borough of Juneau finance director Jeff Rogers says the city doesn’t track the number of rental units. They only have the number of businesses registered in the short-term rentals category, which is 170. 

“I’m not even sure I’d have a good way to know how many of those are people who may just be registering for, you know, the sole purpose of a week for Ironman,” Rogers said. “Even if we had seen, and I mean, I would guess we’ve seen a lot of new registrations this spring. But they may or may not have anything to do with Iron Man.”

Neither Tetley nor Rogers have any way to tell if some of the people who are registering businesses as short-term rentals will continue to rent out their places after the Ironman. 

It’s also still uncertain that everyone coming into town will have a place to stay, though the accommodation thread bodes well for those still looking. 

In the meantime, Bissell will be training and preparing for some of the race obstacles that are more unique to Alaska.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll be running with some bear spray,” Bissell said.

The first paragraph of this story has been modified to clarify how many people are coming to Juneau for the race. The number of hotel rooms available in Juneau has been corrected. And finally, a previous version of this story had Kara Tetley’s name misspelled. 

The Ironman triathlon is coming to Juneau next year. It will be the first time the event is ever held in Alaska.

The race will be on August 7, 2022. It includes a 2.4-mile swim in Auke Lake, a 112-mile bike ride out the road and a 26.2-mile marathon in the Mendenhall Valley, in that order.

There isn’t even a 112-mile road in Juneau. But Ironman has been planning this race for over nine months now, and they were able to plan a course around the Auke Bay area.

They considered how to get all those bikes here, trail conditions and wildlife. And neither bears nor a lack of a road system to get to Juneau phased organizers.

They are partnering with Travel Juneau to plan the event.

“They’ve done this all over the world, so it really was impressive how much, things we would have considered possibly an obstacle, they’re like, ‘Oh no this is, we’re gonna work it this way,’” said Travel Juneau’s Destination Marketing Manager Kara Tetley.

Tetley said that Juneau has a unique appeal to racers as a travel destination.

“A lot of these athletes, my understanding, is that they are very excited to go to new places and that’s part of how they travel, you know? Their family vacation,” she said.

Up to 1,500 athletes, their family and their friends could be coming to Juneau for the triathlon. Tetley said it will be an economic boost for the city.

“Local businesses will be seeing a lot more visitors. The hotels will be probably full,” she said.

Priority registration begins about a week from now on Aug. 16 at 8 a.m. Alaska Daylight Time. You can find out more about the race on the Ironman website.