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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the cold breath exhaled by my rivals as they do the "about to run" jiggle on the starting line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I must start my tracker. The same goes for the guy beside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… there! GPS ready, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to see a arm without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who use them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion pound market. Brands like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, each with an broad range of different versions to suit a spectrum of lifestyles. According to how feature-packed the model you select, costs can start from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

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

"It provides solace… It feels like a friend guiding me."

"Stop telling me about a poor sleep."

A small sample of the reactions I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on my own device? Right now, irritating. It's reporting I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are disrupting my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these compact monitors onto our wrists and wear them constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Now, they can analyse our nightly rest, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

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

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the data points we analyse a accurate representation of the truth? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and constant notifications just add to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite obsessed with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she loves how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a six-month old, there's no point to be told I'm tired," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is possibly too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can monitor blood flow, recording your BPM. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the long term.

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

"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."