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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the chilled vapour exhaled by my rivals as they execute the "starting line" shuffle on the starting line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I have to sort my watch. As does the guy next to me.

The person waiting tuts. I won't start until… done! Connection established, away I go.

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

We're witnessing a thriving, massive market. Brands like Apple Watch lead the market, featuring an broad range of different models to suit a spectrum of lifestyles. Depending on how advanced the model you choose, price tags can range from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It acts as a friend guiding me."

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

A small sample of the reactions I've received from fellow smartwatch wearers when I ask what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on my own device? Currently, frustrating. It's telling me I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm running below are interfering with my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us strap these small gadgets onto our arms and keep them on all day and night, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Now, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they don't track.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a true reflection of reality? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the multitude of metrics and constant notifications just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a quite obsessed with mine," an individual admits.

While she appreciates how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was failing to be energetic enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a young baby, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I could, theoretically, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe too much for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of measuring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually project minute LED lights onto your skin which can observe capillary action, detecting your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to interpret these figures is complex. The expert fears that as further capabilities are introduced, people may struggle 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 health researcher studying wearable tech concurs. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined 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 increased. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their reading rose further.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."