SAINT JOHN, N.B. -- A trio of towns sharing the name ‘Amherst’ are finding common ground with a friendly international competition to determine which community’s residents can walk the furthest.

The Amherst to Amherst Walking Challenge was created by Allison Watson, the active living coordinator for Amherst, N.S., who was trying to take her town’s annual walking challenge to another level.

“I was hoping to open it up to more people who could participate,” she says.

Watson thought it would be interesting if other municipalities called Amherst took part, so she reached out to 14 namesake communities across North America.

“I’m sure my e-mails ended up in many spam boxes, but fortunately, a few wrote back,” says Watson.

Town officials in Amherst, New Hampshire and Amherst, New York were eager to get involved.

“I was very excited,” says Lisa Kistner, assistant to the town supervisor in Amherst, N.Y. “I don’t think 30 seconds lasted before I was typing back saying, ‘I’m interested, I’m interested, give us more information!’”

Rachel O’Sullivan, the program director for Amherst, N.H.’s parks and recreation department, was immediately intrigued by the idea.

“I think it’s a great experiment,” she says. “I don’t know why I haven’t heard of anything like this before. We hear of sister cities but never the same names; so, Allison just had a wonderful idea.”

The Amherst to Amherst Walking Challenge will last the entire month of February. All three communities are keeping a daily count of the distance travelled by their participating walkers. The kilometres (or miles, for U.S. participants) are being tallied up to follow a virtual road map.

“We’re all travelling along the same route to hit 14 different Amhersts in North America,” says Watson.  “And then we’ll all end up in Texas; the goal is to see who can get there first.”

Another goal is for people to increase their activity level in the depths of a pandemic.

“I know it’s been hard for a lot of people, being inside, feeling quite isolated and not being able to do things they would normally do,” said Watson. “February tends to be a hard month in general, so I’m hoping this encourages people to get out and feel involved in a community activity even though we can’t be together at this time.”