Hi! I'm Steph, the owner of PEP FIT! This is my husband, Jared, and my best friend since 8th grade! Both of us have always been very active individuals and enjoy physical fitness for the competition aspect, improving our health, and as an outlet to everyday stressors. In high school, Jared played football, wrestled, and played pick-up basketball games with anyone wanting to ball! I played volleyball, basketball, and softball; continuing my softball career in college. After our college careers, we found our new fitness adventures. Jared started training in jiu jitsu and I started CrossFit and became an L1 Coach only after 2 months of joining my gym! To say we were active, might be an understatement. We thrive on being physically active and it has become our daily routine. 

Our lives were forever changed on May 20th, 2021. I will never forget the phone call from the hubs, with his shaky voice, telling me he has cancer (at the age of 37). In a blink of an eye, everything was different. Jared was experiencing some weird symptoms and had visited an urgent care, ER, and primary care physician all in a two week span. Every time he was prescribed steroids and told he must have been bit by an insect or had an allergic reaction to something to cause the weird swelling around his neck/collarbone area. Never in our wildest dreams did we think that he had cancer. 

Our journey has been long, as we are still battling his cancer today. It has provided some very valuable lessons about taking care of oneself, your mindset, and empowering yourself with knowledge to help you overcome any obstacle you may face. It has taught us that at any moment we need to be ready - physically, mentally, and emotional -  to persevere and prevail through any challenge thrown at us! 

Through our personal challenges over the past couple of years, the idea of PEP FIT evolved. Jared was no longer training jiu jitsu, and I was no longer training to compete in CrossFit. We were training for life - to maintain some type of physical activity, focusing on fueling our bodies, and trying to get adequate rest! Some days our physical activity consisted of walking the halls of the hospital between appointments, or taking our dog for a walk to get some steps in while enjoying the fresh air. Other times, our training was derived from a mission. Within 12 hours of his lung surgery, Jared was walking the hospital halls with his chest tube box and suction machine in tow. His goal was to blow the standard out of the water for his pulmonary function to prove he was strong enough to go home. He walked a half marathon while in the hospital and was released just 5 days post surgery - we had met other patients that had been there for weeks!