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A sense of feeling of anticipation. I can see the cold breath exhaled by my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

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

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

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

In the mele, it's difficult to spot a person without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.

It's a thriving, massive sector. Brands like Garmin dominate, each with an extensive selection of different models to fit a spectrum of budgets. Based on how advanced the model you go for, price tags can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

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

"It provides solace… It acts as a companion guiding me."

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

A handful of the responses I've had from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the overhead branches I'm running below are blocking my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us strap these small monitors onto our arms and wear them all day and night, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them only to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Now, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of reality? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of metrics and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a a little preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be told I'm tired," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I value it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the majority use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor capillary action, recording your heartbeat. More advanced devices measure changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually prevent illness, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag 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 early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the future.

But how to make sense of these figures is complicated. The expert fears that as additional features are incorporated, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A professor focusing on wearable tech concurs. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate rose. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their reading rose further.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."