If you're standing on the sidelines at the Monument Avenue 10K on Saturday, you may hear these three sisters coming.

They will be wearing identical baseball caps emblazoned with the words "Step Sisters." They'll be talking smack and laughing most of the time.

Pattie Hallett, Kathy Hallett and Mary Tomes, who are in their 50s, are sisters with a rivalry that goes back to their childhood in Richmond. Whether they were playing basketball, swimming or playing tennis, there was always an underlying competition among them.

Kathy, the middle sister, sums it up this way: "If the three of us were walking down the hall together, by the end of the hall, it would be a race."

They have nicknamed themselves the "step sisters" because they track their daily steps with pedometers and compete to see who can record the most in any given week.

It all started when Kathy's former employer issued pedometers to workers in her office as part of a program to encourage more daily exercise. Kathy saw how tracking steps motivated people, and she enjoyed being part of a challenge to rack up miles.

So she bought pedometers for her sisters and offered to set up a spreadsheet to track each of their steps.

Thus, the competition began.

Pattie, a night emergency-room nurse at Henrico Doctors' Hospital, thought she would have an edge because of all the walking she did at work. But Kathy was walking several miles a day.

"We started walking, and it was very surprising to me how little I walked compared to her," Pattie said. "Mary and I looked like slugs when we were reporting in to Kathy."

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FITNESS: Sisters taking steps to better health