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A sense of building tension. Visible is the frosty air exhaled by my rivals as they do the "starting line" jiggle on the start line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I must sort my tracker. As does the runner alongside me.

The person waiting sighs. I'm not moving until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

In the mele, it's challenging to spot a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who use them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Companies like Garmin lead the market, each with an wide range of various versions to fit a spectrum of lifestyles. Based on how feature-packed the watch you select, price tags can start from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"I find it infuriating, I can't stop checking."

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

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

A small sample of the reactions I've had from other smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My current opinion on mine? Currently, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the foliage along my route are blocking my satellite signal.

A vast number of us strap these compact monitors onto our wrists and use them all day and night, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Today, they can measure our sleep quality, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of the truth? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the plethora of readings and constant notifications just add to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," one user reveals.

While she loves how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I am caring for a young baby, I don't need to be told I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"I could, theoretically, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your vitals and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can observe pulsation, identifying your heartbeat. More advanced devices analyse changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to assess your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "spotting abnormalities before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular signals 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 vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to interpret these numbers is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as additional features are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor specialising in patient behaviour echoes this sentiment. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

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

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."