UPDATE: Winners in Ice Breaker race

3:40 p.m. UPDATE: The 5-mile race winner was Ben Payne. The 3-mile and 1-mile races were won by Cesar Mireles.

Sieglinde Steinke and her daughter Karin have been participating in Great Falls' annual Ice Breaker Road Race since 1990.

In that time, spouses, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and friends have combined to make the Ice Breaker a family affair for the Steinkes. This Sunday, in the 36th annual event, they will do it again.

"Mom wanted to walk it then (in 1990), and we just slowly started pulling more family members," recalled Karin, a physical therapist at the Foot and Ankle Clinic of Montana in Great Falls.

Karin's then-employer, Columbus Hospital, staffed the race's warmup routine back then. The two participated together.

Sieglinde, 76, now briskly walks the 3-mile race each year. She said it's become a part of who she is, walking "two or three miles" each day near her home in Sun River.

"That's my time to think about things, to talk to the Lord about things and plan," Sieglinde said. "My mind is busy all the time when I walk."

And while walking has remained a big part of her life, a train ride was perhaps the most significant journey in her years.

A native of what was then East Germany, Sieglinde and her parents — like more than 3 million other East Germans between 1949 and 1961 — defected to West Germany in 1956 by rail. It was a harrowing experience.

"When I was at the last station in East Berlin, three Russian soldiers and two German soldiers would come and control everyone in there," Sieglinde remembered.

The soldier responsible for checking her credentials and baggage did not blow the whistle on the young woman.

"I think he just wanted to be nice," she said.

Things could have gone much worse. If Sieglinde had been caught, "I probably would have been sent somewhere in Siberia. … If they would have caught me, then I would have been in bad shape."

Her parents made it through the border in similar fashion, and the family moved to Lünen in West Germany. Four years later, Sieglinde immigrated to Montana to live with her recently widowed aunt, who worked for former Montana state legislator and businessman Charlie Bovey at his ranch near Cascade.

"She wanted one of her nieces or nephews to come over since she was all alone," Sieglinde said of the aunt. Twenty-one and unmarried, the young German woman took the plunge.

In the following years, Sieglinde got a job at the hospital in Great Falls and later met her husband, Emich, another East German who was sponsored by an eastern Montana church to come to the States and find work.

The two operated a dairy farm in Sun River until 1994 when they sold those cattle. They still own about 60 head of beef cattle which they raise with the help of Karin, who lives next door, and other family members in the area.

"We're still busy," Sieglinde said. "Things are just a bit slower."

Emich, 87, has walked the Ice Breaker's 1-mile race each of the past several years.

"We kind of talked him into it with the grandkids," Sieglinde said with a chuckle. Karin noted that they bought her father a T-shirt from the race at one point to help convince him.

The aforementioned grandkids, Dace Steinke and Westin Teppo, are veterans of the Ice Breaker as well. Dace, now 17, has been running the race since he was 3; Westin, 21, since he was 7.

Another grandchild, 12-year-old Jessi McKinley, will be the youngest of the clan participating this year.

After the more sprightly group finishes the 3-mile run at various paces, they'll go back to walk the 1-mile with Grandpa Emich.

"He wants to quit every year, but we get him up for it," Sieglinde said.

Karin noted that there's some inspiration in the Sunday atmosphere.

"The city of Great Falls participates so well," she said. "It's extremely encouraging to see that."

As for Sieglinde, she will walk for the 26th straight year and enjoy every step.

"(It is) not so much the competition, but my family gets involved," she said. "We're all together."

And for a woman who has moved so far for family, nothing could motivate her more.