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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air coming from my competitors as they execute the "about to run" jiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I have to start my watch. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person in the line sighs. I won't start until… there! Connection established, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who use them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar market. Brands like Apple Watch dominate, all offering an broad range of various versions to suit a spectrum of lifestyles. Based on how feature-packed the watch you go for, costs can vary between £100 to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to switch off."

"It reassures me… It acts as a supporter supporting me."

"Stop telling me I've had a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the responses I've received from like-minded device users when I inquire what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Right now, irritating. It's telling me I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these compact gadgets onto our arms and use them 24/7, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them only to give us an idea of our daily steps. Today, they can measure our sleep quality, heart rate, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of reality? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a bit preoccupied with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she values how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being productive enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the most use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor pulsation, recording your heartbeat. More advanced devices analyse changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to gauge your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to interpret these readings is complicated. The expert concerns that as additional features are added, 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 beneficial thing," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate increased. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their anxiety rose further.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."