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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the cold breath emanating from my rivals as they perform the "about to run" jiggle on the beginning point.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I have to start my tracker. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I won't start until… there! GPS ready, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who wear them.

This is a booming, massive industry. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an broad range of diverse devices to cater to a variety of budgets. Depending on how feature-packed the model you select, prices can start from £100 to a significant investment.

"I find it infuriating, I can't stop checking."

"It reassures me… It feels like a friend encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a poor sleep."

A handful of the comments I've received from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, irritating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the trees along my route are disrupting my satellite signal.

Millions of us attach these little devices onto our wrists and use them constantly, seemingly at ease with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them only to give us an idea of our daily steps. Now, they can measure our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they don't track.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we analyse a true reflection of our actual health? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the multitude of readings and constant notifications just add to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a a little obsessed with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she values how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, there's no point to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically project small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can detect blood flow, detecting your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to gauge your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these numbers is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as additional features are incorporated, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."