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There's a building tension. I can see the chilled vapour coming from my rivals as they perform the "pre-race" jiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to sort my tracker. So does the guy beside me.

The person in the line sighs. I won't start until… done! GPS ready, I'm off.

In the mele, it's difficult to find a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who wear them.

It's a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Companies like Samsung Galaxy are prevalent, all offering an wide array of various versions to suit a range of lifestyles. Based on how feature-packed the watch you choose, price tags can vary between a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to switch off."

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

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

A small sample of the responses I've received from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my satellite signal.

A vast number of us attach these little devices onto our wrists and use them all day and night, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our step count. Now, they can measure our nightly rest, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they improve our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and cheerleading alerts just add to our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a quite fixated with mine," an individual confesses.

While she loves how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling initially realised 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 insists her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, there's no point to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"I could, perhaps, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your vitals and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually shine small, green LED lights onto your arm which can detect pulsation, detecting your BPM. More advanced devices detect changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially 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 stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the long term.

But how to understand these readings is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher focusing on cardiology concurs. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate went up. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their reading increased again.

"When people are presented with numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."