How far would you go to train for a race? Well I’m sure we would all put in the necessary time to train and prepare for an upcoming event. I’ve seen Pro Motocross athletes with motocross tracks in there back garden and pro mountain bikers living on the doorstep of amazing trails to assist in there training. The Atherton family are a key example; living in Wales, they have a 4x track to train on in the back garden, amazing downhill runs close buy and a quarry to play in! They all add up to key tools to assist in training in the off season.

So what if you’re Lance Armstrong? How would you go about to train for an event such as the Tour of Flanders? Well living in Austin Texas, there are some amazing roads to train on but no cobbles on them to get to grips with.

Well fear not! Lance has taken building a track in your back garden to the extreme.

Just west of his home in Austin, Lance is building an 8 mile stretch of cobbled road to train on. The locals are calling it Austin-Roubaix and the two million dollar project has already begun with Belgian cobblestones being imported to make the stretch as real as possible. No word yet on if there will be a sprinkler system put in to make the training sessions even more authentic.

“It will be the best for Lance, the best stone,” said Radio Shack director Johan Bruyneel. “It will be the finest cobblestones in Texas.”

No word yet on any plans to recreate a typical French Alp in Austin, but we’ll keep you posted on further developments.

One thing is for sure, “it’s not about the bike”.