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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the chilled vapour coming from my rivals as they execute the "starting line" jiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I must start my watch. So does the guy alongside me.

The person behind us tuts. I won't start until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

During the scramble, it's challenging to see a arm without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who rely on them.

We're witnessing a thriving, massive industry. Companies like Garmin dominate, featuring an wide selection of various devices to fit a spectrum of needs. According to how advanced the watch you select, prices can range from £100 to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to switch off."

"It comforts me… It feels like a supporter guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a restless night."

Just some of the comments I've had from other smartwatch wearers when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's reporting I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the foliage along my route are blocking my GPS connection.

A vast number of us strap these little gadgets onto our arms and wear them all day and night, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them only to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the data points we obsess over a true reflection of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of measurements and constant notifications just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a a little fixated with mine," a wearer admits.

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

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a six-month old, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that only too well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is possibly too much for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use detectors on the back of the watch.

They commonly shine small, green LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, identifying your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as more functions are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so many things is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor specialising in cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got more worried. They checked again, and their heart rate went up again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."