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There's a nervous excitement. I can see the cold breath coming from my competitors as they do the "starting line" wiggle on the beginning point.

A swift twitch of the hips.

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

Hold on. I have to start my device. As does the person alongside me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's challenging to see a person without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us runners who wear them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Apple Watch lead the market, featuring an wide selection of diverse devices to fit a variety of lifestyles. Depending on how high tech the model you select, prices can range from £100 to a small fortune.

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

"It reassures me… It's like a companion supporting me."

"I wish it wouldn't say about a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the responses people have shared from other device users when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on my own device? Right now, irritating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the overhead branches I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us attach these little gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on constantly, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an rough count of our step count. Today, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they boost our overall health, or do the multitude of readings and motivational messages just add to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a a little preoccupied with mine," a wearer admits.

While she appreciates how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be active enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a young baby, I don't need to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I value it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps too much for me."

Inside the Device

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

They typically project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can observe capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically prevent illness, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

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

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to make sense of these figures is not straightforward. The expert worries that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying patient behaviour concurs. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate went up. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."