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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the cold breath coming from my fellow runners as they perform the "pre-race" wiggle on the starting line.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I must start my tracker. So does the runner next to me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I won't start until… yes! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a arm without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who use them.

This is a booming, massive industry. Brands like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an wide selection of various devices to suit a range of budgets. Depending on how advanced the model you select, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to switch off."

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion supporting me."

"I wish it wouldn't say about a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the reactions I've received from fellow device users when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's reporting I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are disrupting my satellite signal.

Millions of us fasten these little monitors onto our arms and wear them 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're constantly recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Now, they can track our nightly rest, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But do they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we analyse a true reflection of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of metrics and constant notifications just add to our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a bit fixated with mine," a wearer reveals.

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

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be energetic enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I've not slept," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"I could, perhaps, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the most use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect blood flow, identifying your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually prevent illness, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the future.

But how to make sense of these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in cardiology echoes this sentiment. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety rose further.

"If we see data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."