Any time a work trip begins with the best in the business telling you how much they love your products, you know it’s going to be a great week. That’s exactly what happened when, an hour after I’d landed in New York, I was listening to U.S record-holder Deena Kastor praising Garmin’s fitness watches to representatives from New York’s top retailers and the New York Road Runners who had gathered for Garmin’s running summit at Equinox Fitness on Broadway. The gathering of industry experts was just part of a busy marathon week in New York City, where Garmin is sponsoring Ryan Hall in his quest for victory in Sunday’s race and Edward Norton and his Maasai Marathon team’s fundraising efforts for African conservation (visit MaasaiMarathon.com to learn more or sponsor Edward and his team). Ryan and Edward have both been making headlines while training with Garmin Forerunners. You can see some of Edward’s training runs on Garmin Connect by going to http://connect.garmin.com/explore?owner=maasaimarathonteam

So what does Deena love about her Garmin? Depends on which one she’s wearing that day. When training with the GPS-enabled Forerunner 405, Deena appreciates the same information that benefits runners of all age and speed – knowing exactly how far and fast she’s going at any point during the run, no matter where she is in the world. And then there’s that flash of pink on her wrist at Chicago, the limited-edition Garmin FR60 that was launched along with its blue counterpart this week in New York. Deena told us how she showed her FR60 to a fellow Garmin user this week at a charity run, and the new fitness watch was quickly added to the woman’s wish list. She’s not alone. With FR60 joining the multisport Forerunner 310XT and calorie-counting 405CX in our booth at the expo, hundreds of Garmin gifts were purchased for (or by) runners from around the globe. Guess I’m not the only one having a great week.