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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air coming from my competitors as they perform the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I must sort my tracker. The same goes for the person next to me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's difficult to find a arm without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who use them.

It's a booming, multi-billion pound industry. Names like Garmin dominate, each with an extensive array of diverse models to cater to a variety of budgets. According to how feature-packed the model you choose, price tags can range from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

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

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

"Stop telling me I've had a poor sleep."

Just some of the responses people have shared from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are blocking my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these little monitors onto our arms and keep them on all day and night, apparently comfortable with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we used them only to give us an idea of our step count. Currently, they can analyse our sleep patterns, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the avalanche of metrics and motivational messages just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a a little preoccupied with mine," an individual reveals.

While she loves how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told I'm tired," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They commonly emit small, green LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is complicated. The expert concerns that as more functions are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that the ability to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher specialising in patient behaviour agrees. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse rose. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their heart rate increased again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."