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A sense of nervous excitement. I can see the frosty air coming from my competitors as they do the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I need to start my watch. As does the runner alongside me.

The person behind us sighs. I won't start until… yes! GPS ready, I'm off.

In the mele, it's challenging to find a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who use them.

It's a explosive, massive industry. Names like Garmin lead the market, each with an extensive array of different models to fit a variety of needs. According to how high tech the watch you go for, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to switch off."

"It comforts me… It feels like a companion guiding me."

"Stop telling me I've had a restless night."

A small sample of the comments I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on my own device? Right now, irritating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are disrupting my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these little gadgets onto our arms and use them constantly, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Long past are the days when we used them solely to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

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

But do they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a quite fixated with mine," one user reveals.

While she appreciates how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be active enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a young baby, I don't need to be told I'm tired," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I've got this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is possibly too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

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

They usually shine minute LED lights onto your arm which can detect capillary action, recording your heartbeat. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean 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 years to come.

But how to understand these figures is not straightforward. The expert worries that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

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

A clinical psychologist focusing on patient behaviour agrees. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse rose. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their anxiety went up again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."