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There's a feeling of anticipation. Visible is the cold breath exhaled by my competitors as they perform the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to sort my watch. So does the person alongside me.

The person waiting sighs. I'm not moving until… yes! Connection established, I'm off.

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

It's a explosive, massive sector. Brands like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an extensive array of various versions to cater to a variety of needs. Depending on how advanced the device you go for, costs can range from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, I can't stop checking."

"It comforts me… It's like a companion encouraging me."

"Stop telling me about a bad night's sleep."

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

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's reporting I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are blocking my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these little gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, seemingly at ease with the fact they're continuously recording us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an idea of our step count. Currently, they can measure our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our body battery.

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 obsess over a true reflection of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the multitude of readings and motivational messages just add to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a bit preoccupied with mine," one user admits.

While she loves how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being active enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, there's no point to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the most use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, detecting your pulse rate. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to interpret these numbers is complex. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in cardiology agrees. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."