By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

You've got to wonder what it is about a town that can produce not one, not two, not three, but four Olympic runners at a time. And a small town at that. Mammoth Lakes, in California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada, proudly claims Ian Dobson and Jen Rhines, both 5,000-meter runners at this year’s Games, plus four-time Olympic marathoner Deena Kastor, and, most exciting of all, Ryan Hall, the new men’s marathon phenom, who’s about to find out whether he’s the world’s greatest in this Sunday’s Olympic men’s marathon.

Is it something in the water?

Well, there is the fact that Mammoth is at 7,000 feet, roughly the same elevation as the part of Kenya where some of the world’s fastest runners live and train. And then there's the small-town pride that has motivated the town to run a million miles collectively in honor of homeboy Ryan Hall (part of an admirable initiative called the Lighthouse Project) and to post "Run, Ryan, Run!" signs all over the town.

But I’ll go out on a limb and say that I think this convergence of great runners must be mostly a result of the Eastern Sierra's unbelievable beauty. Consider this: the first time Hall got a notion to run, he put on his shoes and ran 15 miles around Big Bear Lake with his dad. Think he would have run 15 miles for his very first long run if he’d lived in a suburban strip mall town? I doubt it.

I grew up in Marin County, running on Mt. Tamalpais, and I’m certain that my early exposure to those trails is what turned me into an avid and lifelong runner. I feel blessed to have grown up thinking of exercise as a fun thing to do, not a chore. All because there’s nowhere I’d rather be than a quiet mountain trail shaded by redwoods, or up high breathing in the maple syrup-y scent of manzanita and looking down at the fog bank below. That’s the closest I get to religion. Give me my Sunday run and I’ll be fine.

I haven't yet made it to Mammoth but after reading about Hall and his hometown in the August 11–18 issue of the New Yorker, I’m ready to go check it out.

What’s your favorite place to run? Do tell…