It's way too early.

I shouldn't be here. I have to go into work at 2 p.m. and have Bible study training in three hours.

But instead, I'm at the Socastee High School track, getting ready to participate in a Crossfit workout at 7:30 a.m.

Thankfully, I'm not alone. I'm participating in a workout called Athletes in Training (AIT) for collegiate athletes who are also on Campus Outreach Charlotte's 2012 Summer Beach Project in Myrtle Beach, S.C. SBP, as it's called, is an eight week long Christian summer discipleship program put on by Campus Outreach regions all over the country. Some take different forms (some inland COs participate in a Summer Mountain Project), but I'm plop on the beach.

Today is Friday, therefore it's "celebrity day," the day non-athletes can come. They ask me to introduce myself and I do, saying I'm writing a story for my school's newspaper.

"Awesome!" someone says.

After everyone else has introduced themselves, Daquan Minggia, a rising sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who is going to try out for the Spartans' men's basketball team in the fall, shares his testimony, his story of how he became a Christian. He also talks about his "ministry target" in the fall, the men's basketball team he has yet to join. This is a regular occurrence at AIT workouts.

"Normally at the beginning of workouts you sit around and hear about your workout," says Kaitlyn Palumbo, a rising junior and Elon University cheerleader. "But it's really cool to hear about everyone's teams and the work that God is doing on them and just hearing how the Christian faith is spreading like a wildfire on each team wherever there's a believer, so it's really encouraging."

Jon Smith, a rising junior track and field athlete at Wingate University who helps lead the workout, seconds the sentiment.

"(The testimony) in itself is so encouraging," he says, "that we're all on the same page with that, wanting to advance the kingdom of God by spreading his gospel. Aside from the workout, just starting our day with that just livens us and reminds us why we're here, what we're doing and the reason for it."

The group prays for Daquan and the workout and then it begins. It's a Crossfit workout, a repitition of this: an 800-meter run on the track then 50 "wallballs" in the workout room inside. "Wallballs" involve taking a medicine ball, throwing it against the wall, catching it and doing a squat with the ball. I have 20 minutes to do as many repititions of that pair as I can. The run, the longest I've done since I ran a leg of the 4x400-meter relay race once during sophomore year of high school at a track meet (for the B-team), takes the breath out of me. Then I jog inside.

The Crossfit workout is offered, but not mandatory, Palumbo explains.

"We have the option to do Crossfit or if you have workouts from you coach gave you, you can do that, or you can do both," she says. "On Fridays, we play our sport with people who do our sport."

Since it's a Friday, Palumbo and a cheerleader hopeful from another school are practicing handsprings and tumbles in the grass beside the field.

Inside, Elon rising redshirt sophomore offensive lineman Brian Gerwig is lifting weights and tossing a medicine ball against a wall. He playfully mocks me for the physical beating I'm taking.

It's Gerwig's first Summer Beach Project and his first time doing a workout with all Christians.

"It's good just working out with other college athletes from across North Carolina," he says. The Project has students from schools like UNCG, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Davidson College, Wingate, Guilford College and Elon. "You're pushing yourself working out-wise and there's a whole different level of just encouragement and things like that from all the people that hasn't been to the level it is now. We push ourselves and there's encouragement at Elon but here it's more of a spiritual encouragement to honor God through working out."

I slowly suffer through the 50 "wallballs" and hear the encouragement throughout. "Good job!" "Keep going."

Jogging out the door to the track, I'm starting to feel it in my legs. The pain kills, but I want to keep going. So does everyone else running with me. "You're encouraging me, Zach" is one comment I get.

"Having all these different people encourage you throughout your workout, to tell you, 'You're doing a great job, keep working, keep pushing yourself,' it's nice," Gerwig says. "You're not yelled at because you're not doing a certain amount or something like that. You're being encouraged for what you can do."

Thank goodness for that. I get three-fourths of the way through the 800-meter run then decide to walk and reflect on everything so far.

Smith is in his second year of AIT and does the long jump and triple jump and occasionally runs the 100-meter race at Wingate. He says last year's AIT was helpful both spiritually and physically.

"What really makes AIT worthwhile is the fact that you have other believers on the same page as you, encouraging you, pushing you to glorify God through your sport," he says. "Coming back here, it's been awesome to see the same desire that these athletes have, not only for working out for their sport, but also, in a sense, looking at it as they're glorifying God, and that's what's most important."

He adds that, after last summer's AIT, he was one of the top runners on the Wingate track and field team in preseason practices.

One athlete using AIT to rebuild his workout routine is Elon senior Niko Fraser, an outfielder on the baseball team. Fraser missed more than half of his junior season after suffering a concussion April 6 against Furman University. He has since been cleared to workout and is taking advantage of AIT to prepare for his last season in uniform.

"Now that I am completely cleared, I've worked very, very hard," he said. "I think having the concussion and everything might have been the best thing for my career. I have childlike excitement coming into my senior year, so that's going to be fun."

Fraser does not do the Crossfit workout either, instead doing some funky stretches on the concrete beside the track and lifting weights inside. As the only baseball player participating in AIT, he has no companions within his sport, but finds camaraderie with athletes from other sports in the workout sense.

"It's cool because the body systems you work out (are the same)," he says. "Some of the tennis players, you can work out your shoulders with them. You can do ab stuff with, and I know it sounds weird, the cheerleaders and lacrosse players, and then you can do lower body with the football players. It's really cool because you get to build relationships with all the different athletes."

I've stopped my workout to take pictures, exercising my right to cop-out as a journalist. My legs are killing me and I'm ready to leave.

"Today was tough, today was real tough," Smith says. "We did a Crossfit workout and it definitely challenged me. But I feel awesome."

I feel quite the opposite.

I turned to Gerwig to get his perspective and agreed more with him.

"(God) gave us all of these abilities, so (the workout is) just a whole other spiritual level, which is awesome," he says. "I don't feel like, by being here all summer, we're losing anything."

Fraser reminds me why they're all here.

"The verse we revolve (AIT) around is Colossians 3:23, which says, 'For whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, as if working for the Lord and not for man,'" he says. "It's kinda like doing our athletic abilities for God's glory and not our own. It really is a different viewpoint than one might get in a secular view of sports"