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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the frosty air emanating from my competitors as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to adjust my device. The same goes for the guy beside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… there! Connection established, and I'm running.

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

This is a thriving, multi-billion dollar market. Brands like Apple Watch dominate, all offering an extensive range of various devices to fit a range of lifestyles. According to how advanced the watch you go for, price tags can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

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

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

"Please don't notify me about a restless night."

A handful of the reactions people have shared from fellow smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on my own device? Currently, irritating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches along my route are interfering with my GPS connection.

Millions of us fasten these small gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on constantly, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them only to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Now, they can track our sleep patterns, stress levels, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's tricky to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of reality? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the multitude of metrics and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a quite fixated with mine," an individual admits.

While she values how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I could, perhaps, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is possibly too much for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your health metrics and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to understand these readings is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are incorporated, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in wearable tech concurs. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse increased. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety went up again.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."