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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they execute the "about to run" wiggle on the start line.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I have to start my watch. As does the person alongside me.

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

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who rely on them.

We're witnessing a thriving, massive market. Names like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, all offering an broad array of different devices to suit a range of needs. Based on how feature-packed the device you select, price tags can range from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It's like a supporter supporting me."

"Stop telling me I've experienced a restless night."

A handful of the responses I've received from fellow smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm running below are blocking my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these small monitors onto our wrists and use them 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Now, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But can they do what they advertise? And are the data points we obsess over a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and motivational messages just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little obsessed with mine," a wearer admits.

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

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently active enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I'm tired," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I could, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I value it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is possibly too much for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your health metrics and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly project minute LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, identifying your heartbeat. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically prevent illness, "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 conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as additional features are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying cardiology echoes this sentiment. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM rose. They got more worried. They checked again, and their reading rose further.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."