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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. I can see the cold breath exhaled by my rivals as they do the "pre-race" shuffle on the starting line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. It's almost time...

Hold on. I need to adjust my tracker. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person behind us tuts. I'm not moving until… done! Signal acquired, I'm off.

In the mele, it's hard to find a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion dollar market. Names like Apple Watch are prevalent, featuring an extensive selection of diverse devices to suit a range of needs. According to how advanced the model you go for, price tags can range from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to relax."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a restless night."

A handful of the comments I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? Currently, annoying. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the trees along my route are blocking my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these compact monitors onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Long past are the days when we used them solely to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Currently, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a true reflection of our actual health? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she loves how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being energetic enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a infant, there's no point to be told I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the majority use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. More advanced devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to gauge your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

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

But how to make sense of these readings is complicated. The expert fears that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

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

A health researcher studying patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. Her work into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate went up. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety went up again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."