Hi, this is Pat Norwil, Crocodile Trophy. We're getting ready to start the third stage from Mungerannie to Clifton Hills.

I had a chance last night to talk to a couple of the Team Fuji guys, and Eric Vanderaerden was pretty happy with his stage yesterday. He said that their strategy is to push hard for the first three stages, and secure a good time for the leader's jersey...so far he's got, like, 27 minutes on me, but I'm small potatoes for him.

The other rumor is that he's not worth anything in the technical sections, and we've got about four stages of where it's very technical: rocky, big drop-offs, and they're long stages...190 kilometers, and some guys are taking 16 hours to complete them, so, the rumor is that he's pushing hard now because he could lose a couple hours in the technical stuff.

"...another hard, fast day in the paceline..."

RACE PHOTOS

Mungerannie is a small roadhouse with about four inhabitants and about 300 parakeets squawking away in the trees. It's about 5:30 in the morning, and it's going to be another beautiful, blue-sky day.

It's a pretty wonderful place. Boy, what it takes to do this race...for these guys, the athletes, is to come in and unload their luggage from the truck, drag their bicycle boxes over to a camp spot, and set up a tent and get organized, and then meals are usually about two hours after we arrive, which is really about three hours after we arrive, and they consist of pretty basic food; pasta noodles, soup, some salad, and lots of white bread. I didn't know they ate white bread anymore. Lots of the guys are kind of grumpy about the food...plenty of food, though, to go at the tempo that we're racing at, with what they're serving us...it'll work, it's fine. So far we've had a roadhouse with a pub at every place, so, after dinner, usually, that's kind of the hub for decompressing after a day.

It's a good event. It's amazing what it takes these guys to put this on. Gerhard Schönbacher is the race director, and he's got four lorries and about 12 jeeps following us, and medical support, and there's the depots here...they call them the checkpoints, there's three to four on each stage. You know, fruit and the usual stuff, but I think the wind is going to kick up again today, out of the west maybe, shifting a little bit. We might even get lucky and have a little tailwind today. I'm not counting on it, I think its going to be another hard, fast day in the paceline.

You know, one thing I've noticed about this race is that you've got to be perfect every day. You can't fall off the pace, especially fall off the paceline that you're on because it's, boy, you'd lose a lot of time having to battle the wind on a daily basis. My butt's sore and I've got to go slide into some riding shorts and do it all over again.

— Pat Norwil, MountainZone.com Correspondent