There's a feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour coming from my fellow runners as they execute the "starting line" shuffle on the start line.
A swift movement of the hips.
I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. Three, two, one...
Hold on. I must start my device. So does the guy alongside me.
The person behind us tuts. I won't start until… yes! Signal acquired, I'm off.
Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.
We're witnessing a booming, massive industry. Companies like Apple Watch dominate, each with an wide array of different devices to cater to a variety of lifestyles. According to how advanced the model you select, price tags can start from £100 to a significant investment.
"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to switch off."
"It comforts me… It's like a supporter encouraging me."
"I wish it wouldn't say about a bad night's sleep."
Just some of the reactions I've had from fellow device users when I question what they feel about theirs.
My feelings on mine? Right now, irritating. It's reporting I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm passing under are disrupting my satellite signal.
Countless individuals of us fasten these little gadgets onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, seemingly at ease with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.
A distant memory are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Today, they can track our sleep quality, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.
It's difficult to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.
But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we obsess over a true reflection of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of readings and constant notifications just increase our daily stresses?
"I become a bit fixated with mine," a wearer confesses.
While she loves how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.
Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be energetic enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.
"I've got a young baby, there's no point to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."
Couldn't she just take it off?
"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is maybe too much for me."
Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the reverse of the watch.
They commonly emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can detect pulsation, recording your pulse rate. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.
A professor says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".
He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously 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 irregular heartbeat.
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 make sense of these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.
"I have some doubts that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.
A health researcher studying cardiology agrees. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".
She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM increased. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their heart rate rose further.
"If we see stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."
A geospatial analyst with over a decade of experience in terrain modeling and environmental data visualization.
