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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. Visible is the cold breath coming from my competitors as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the starting line.

A rapid flick of the hips.

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

Wait a second. I need to sort my device. As does the runner beside me.

The person behind us sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's difficult to spot a person without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us participants who use them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion pound sector. Names like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an wide selection of diverse versions to cater to a spectrum of lifestyles. According to how advanced the device you go for, price tags can start from £100 to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to switch off."

"It provides solace… It's like a companion supporting me."

"Stop telling me about a poor sleep."

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

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on my own device? Currently, frustrating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these compact monitors onto our wrists and keep them on 24/7, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we analyse a faithful picture of reality? Do they boost our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," a wearer reveals.

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

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was failing to be productive enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got 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 take it off?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

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

They commonly shine minute LED lights onto your wrist which can detect blood flow, recording your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to interpret these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are added, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor specialising in patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their anxiety 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 look, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."