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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. Apparent is the frosty air exhaled by my competitors as they do the "starting line" jiggle on the starting line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I need to adjust my device. The same goes for the runner alongside me.

The person behind us sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's hard to find a person without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us participants who use them.

This is a explosive, massive industry. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an broad selection of various versions to suit a variety of needs. Based on how high tech the watch you choose, costs can vary between £100 to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It provides solace… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the comments people have shared from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my satellite signal.

Millions of us strap these little devices onto our arms and use them constantly, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Now, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, glucose levels, our body battery.

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

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the data points we analyse a faithful picture of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the multitude of measurements and motivational messages just increase our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a bit preoccupied with mine," an individual confesses.

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

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told I've not slept," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I value it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can monitor capillary action, identifying your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as further capabilities are introduced, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher focusing on patient behaviour concurs. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their reading increased again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."