Hi, this is Pat Norwil with the Crocodile Trophy, and we're back in civilization in the beautiful little town of Laura. Two stages to go, and today was considered the hardest of the stages — 165 kilometers of pretty treacherous trail. It was deep sand; I think it was about 30 kilometers of deep sand and pushing our bikes. Lots of steep hills — very rocky, super, super rocky. But it was an awesome day. The trail pretty much stayed up high the whole time and just winded along this ridge and down through some old mining areas and Maytown. It was pretty spectacular; people are exhausted and still out on the course.

Yesterday, we did Mareeba to Karma Waters and camped there, Outback-style in this shithole. Most of the people wouldn't even use the water there because it was stagnant, dry river. And there was this little pool of water that was about shin-deep, it was pretty scummy. So a lot of uncomfortable campers last night. Then camping in the ant field. Oh, everybody's going to be very happy to be in Laura to have a bar and a grocery store. But there's still quite a few people who are out on the course and I reckon it'll probably be dark before the last people show up.

Once again, Roger Smeets is just walking away with the race. Just to give you an example, his time was six hours today and mine was eight. In the same stage. I mean, this guy is just phenomenal. He was 45 minutes ahead of the 2nd place guy, Thomas Dam, who definitely rocked today, which was great to see. The way the stages are working, there's overall times — after Roger, of course, he's won every stage I think; and it falls from there down. In minutes, I think I'm about three hours behind the 1st place guy. Hanging in there at 11th place.

Today was kind of interesting, I flipped over the handlebars and landed on my hand. I looked at my middle finger and the middle joint, the joints were shoved underneath each other, and I was thinking, "Shit I broke my finger!" And I thought, "Oh, you know, I should probably pull traction on it just to set it." And I pulled on it, and I relocated the finger.

A lot of people went over the bars today, it was super technical. I was riding with Frankie-boy and he was right behind me on this descent and all of a sudden, I hear this huge guttural sound and a pile of dust and there's Frankie, lacerated the palm of his hand pretty bad. It was bleeding pretty heavily. But (he) got it under control.

I died in the sand. Typical of me, the last 30 kilometers of every stage have been staggering. I've just been dragging my ass. And Carrie had a bad day yesterday, got heatstroke and was pretty out of it last night at the shit hole camp. She was pretty upset, too, like most people. I think camping's been pretty minimal, at best. And food — basically the race structure is falling apart all around Gerhardt right now. He's just frantically trying to get the race over with so he can get out of Australia while he still can walk. There's some pretty angry people here.

But tomorrow's going to be a really tough stage again. Then, basically the next two stages are going to be pretty tough. Laura to Cooktown is lots of steep hills. And then Cooktown to Port Douglas is another really steep day.

So we're in the mountains, right on the Coastal Range, and it's steep everywhere. We'd climb out of a little ravine and we'd climb up right on to a ridge. Can't see the ocean yet, but I think tomorrow going in to Cooktown we'll be able to see stuff, so it should be pretty good.

Yesterday's stage was a joke, 175 kilometers. It was just a terrible joke, 100 kilometers on the asphalt. I mean, I thought this was a mountain bike race and here we're driving ourselves for 100 kilometers. And it was kind of funny because it was a mass-mutiny and we rode together for the 100 kilometers on the road and then sort of spread out for the 60 on the dirt. But we'd get to the first two depots and nobody'd want to leave, we just kind of all stood around, ate bananas and oranges and joked. They were trying to prod us to keep going but nobody wanted to go. Eventually, we ended the stage and they did a 30 kilometer transfer, shoving everybody in these little jeeps, driving us on these hellbent for leather roads. Pretty interesting travelling. This is an adventure in survival.

But that's about it for now, Carrie's still out there. She's probably not too happy with today. It was really hot, I think it was in the high 90s, low 100s and just a little bit of humidity. Pretty dry, a lot of dehydration with the front guys. A lot of guys died at the end in the sandbox. It'll be an early night for most of us.

That's it!

— Pat Norwil, MountainZone.com Correspondent