One Santa Fe woman has the fate of four endurance athletes in her hands. But to Sandra Smith, this task is right up her alley.

Smith has been "crewing" for her husband, Mike Smith, who runs ultra marathons, for several years. She follows him in a van, making sure he's hydrated, making sure he eats right, finding random places to sleep at night — all the time dealing with a sometimes grouchy athlete ("Can you blame somebody for being grumpy after running 36 hours?" she asks).

Smith was recently designated the "crew chief" for a relay team of four cyclists — who together make up Team4HIVHope — riding in the Race Across America to raise funds for the nonprofit Until There's a Cure Foundation, to raise awareness about the disease and to squash negative stigmas about people who are HIV-positive.

Her childhood friend, Jim Williams, asked Smith to be the crew chief for his team because he's seen how hard she has worked for her husband. Smith accepted the challenge.

"From my perspective, he took a bit of a risk," Smith said. "I don't know anything about bicycling."

But she knows a thing or two about keeping an athlete healthy during the race, and she's very organized, equipping her with the skills necessary to handle all the complicated logistics of the Race Across America.

The race is 3,016 miles from California to Maryland, and Smith is organizing everything from sleeping schedules (for the four athletes and 14 crew members) to renting the two vans and one RV so the team can race those miles in seven days. The June race has long been dubbed the "world's toughest cycling race."

A documentary crew led by Patrick Burns will film the team's experience.

"I'm scared and I'm nervous, but I just think it's going to be the (most fun) thing," Williams said, adding that three of the four relay-team members are HIV-positive. The one cyclist who is not HIV-positive is a personal trainer who is "very dedicated to seeing this disease eradicated in his lifetime," Smith said. "Most people don't think of people who are HIV-positive as having that capability (for endurance events). Our guys are really focused on letting the United States and the world know what they can accomplish when they have access to the right medical treatments."

In addition to that, Williams said they are riding for awareness.

"We want to try and educate people and eliminate the stigma that is attached to HIV and AIDS," Williams said during a recent phone interview from his New York law office. "That's the main reason we want to do the ride — to show people that people who have AIDS and HIV can participate in sports and can lead healthy, active lives."

The 14-member crew consists of one nurse, Smith said, to care for the athletes in the event of a dangerous side effect from their drugs.

"We don't know what to expect from all the racers who are (HIV) positive," Williams said, adding that all three men are on medications to control the virus, and those drugs can cause side effects such as dehydration. "We need to be more careful than a rider who doesn't have HIV."

While races like these cannot be "won" by the crew, Williams said, they can be lost if the crew is not careful. But he stressed that with Smith at the helm, he has no worries.

"It's all orchestrated by Sandra," Williams said. "All we have to do is race, ride our bikes, eat and sleep — everything else Sandra will do. Sandra is one in a million. She's a really special person."

Smith said she's ready to be a "motivator," but she foresees that the job will not be too difficult. "They're so dedicated to doing this that when they get in a hard spot in the race, motivating them will only be reminding them why they're here and why they're doing this."

Contact Ana Maria Trujillo at 986-3084 or atrujillo@sfnewmexican.com.