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A sense of building tension. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my competitors as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I have to adjust my watch. As does the guy alongside me.

The person in the line sighs. I'm not moving until… yes! Connection established, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's difficult to spot a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us runners who wear them.

It's a explosive, massive market. Brands like Garmin lead the market, featuring an broad range of diverse devices to suit a variety of budgets. Based on how advanced the model you go for, costs can vary between a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't switch off."

"It comforts me… It's like a friend guiding me."

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

Just some of the comments people have shared from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I question what they feel about theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm running below are blocking my satellite signal.

A vast number of us fasten these compact monitors onto our arms and wear them constantly, seemingly at ease with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them only to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Today, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they don't track.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the multitude of readings and motivational messages just add to our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she values how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be active enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your vitals and interpreting your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually project small, green LED lights onto your arm which can detect blood flow, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag 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 about to have a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to make sense of these figures is complex. The expert worries that as more functions are introduced, people may not be able to fully understand their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so many things is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor studying wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they saw a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate increased. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their reading rose further.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."