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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they perform the "starting line" wiggle on the start line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I have to start my tracker. As does the person next to me.

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

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to find a arm without a wearable on it. And this isn't only us participants who rely on them.

This is a explosive, massive market. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, featuring an wide range of different devices to suit a spectrum of lifestyles. Depending on how feature-packed the model you go for, price tags can range from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I can't relax."

"It provides solace… It's like a friend encouraging me."

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

Just some of the comments people have shared from fellow device users when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us strap these compact monitors onto our arms and wear them 24/7, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Now, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a accurate representation of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little fixated with mine," one user reveals.

While she loves how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be productive enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I'm tired," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its fitness insights, I just wonder 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 unique way of measuring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They usually project minute LED lights onto your arm which can observe capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to interpret these readings is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as further capabilities are added, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a set of heart condition 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 spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM rose. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their reading rose further.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."