Balz and I are, as always, a little late when we line up at the start of the fourth stage in the morning. Our bodies are starting to ache and we move accordingly slowly. But we are wide awake when the starting gun goes off. Balz had warned me that we were about to climb an increasingly steep ramp. It wasn't enough to get me started. However, my legs feel surprisingly fresh and I manage the first climb quite well. After the steepest section, I immediately enter a single Suonen trail. Despite the slightly damp and in places quite slippery surface, we quickly find our speed. Unlike yesterday, I feel awake today and am happy that we got off to such a good start. The trail leads in countless hairpin bends towards Stalden, which we pass and reach the shuttle bus after a short uphill section. We give each other a high-five - so the day can go on.

For the next section, we take the cable car from Saas Grund to the Kreuzboden mountain station at 2,400 meters above sea level. The descent is fast and technical. Balz discovers some creative lines, a little too wild for me and I almost go over the handlebars. "All went well", I think to myself and ride on at full throttle. Further down, we meet some Epic riders. They have more of a struggle than we do on the fast downhill section, and there are always riders with flat feet on the edge; the cross-cuts say hello.
Soon the fast-paced part is over and we find ourselves on a long climb high above Saas Fee. We don't want to waste any time here and prefer to consolidate our lead in the classification. Luckily for me, the climb is fine and we make good progress. When we reach the top, I almost want to congratulate myself - I think I've done really well. Balz kept pushing me and made the whole thing a bit more bearable.

I'm looking forward to the long descent that follows, certainly one of the longest of the Perskindol-Swiss-Epic. We speed along on a fantastic spruce-needle trail, but there are always cross-cuts just at the moment when you should be braking for the next hairpin bend. Then it happens "Pffffffffff" - a flat tire! I'll dispense with swearing at this point. Balz stops immediately and quickly pulls a patch and CO2 cartridge out of his rucksack. We quickly remove the hole in the side wall and push in a latex sausage. "Put the CO2 cartridge in the back and off we go" I think to myself, but when Balz puts it in, the latex milk still spurts out on all sides. A hose has to go in anyway and as we have emptied the cartridge in vain, we now pump. It takes a long two minutes until the tire is finally inflated. Tanja and Nicolas, the second overall mixed team, also passed us a good minute ago and Balz complains about sore arms.
As if we hadn't already lost enough time, the rear wheel doesn't want to be refitted: The derailleur hanger is badly bent. Balz uses force to bend it back into place, but this now pushes the axle away from the thread so that screwing the thru-axle tight takes another minute.
Finally back on the bike, we don't want to lose any more time and race past Saas Fee on the gravel roads, then join a group on the main road without even looking up. We don't exchange a word for the next very strenuous kilometers to the checkpoint. We try to keep the damage to the overall classification as small as possible and give it our all and then some. When we finally reach the checkpoint, we fall into each other's arms, but I notice that Balz is a bit soured. It's all over for me, but Balz continues to gnaw away at it.

In Kalpetran, we hop back on the shuttle bus that rides us to Grächen. However, the day is not over yet and we take the cable car up to Hannigalp in Grächen where the same final descent as yesterday awaits us, which in principle makes us happy. But we want to get the day over with as quickly as possible. I'm a little distrustful of my rear tube and ride more cautiously than before. Nevertheless, we ride fast and overtake some flow riders who have started ahead of us. Apart from the South American, who doesn't seem to be in a hurry at all, they all let us pass quickly. At the finish we are both completely out of breath and hanging over our handlebars, exhausted. The words of the speaker are balm for our ears: "Only lost just under four minutes and still five minutes ahead." We definitely want to manage those five minutes tomorrow and get to Zermatt at the foot of the "Horu".

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