strace a sleep process?

Hi,

I asked this in another forum a few weeks back but no-one answered.
Maybe it is a stupid question and if so, please tell me.

If I have this command, sleep 1800 , and I want to strace it to see what count it is at, out of that 1800, how would I do it?

I know I can create a loop with a counter and sleep 1 which will display the count, but I don't want that count going into a log file.

Thanks very much.