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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the cold breath coming from my fellow runners as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid flick of the hips.

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

Hold on. I have to adjust my tracker. The same goes for the guy alongside me.

The person waiting tuts. I'm not moving until… done! GPS ready, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's difficult to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us participants who rely on them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Brands like Garmin dominate, all offering an broad array of different models to suit a range of lifestyles. According to how high tech the device you go for, prices can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

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

"It comforts me… It acts as a friend supporting me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a poor sleep."

Just some of the responses I've received from fellow device users when I question what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are blocking my GPS connection.

Millions of us attach these small devices onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can analyse our nightly rest, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we scrutinise a true reflection of our actual health? Do they improve our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a quite preoccupied with mine," an individual admits.

While she values how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, 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 have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be told I'm tired," she says. "I know that only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I value it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the additional features 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 bodily functions and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor pulsation, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially prevent illness, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the future.

But how to understand these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are added, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher focusing on wearable tech concurs. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate increased again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."