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A sense of building tension. Visible is the cold breath exhaled by my rivals as they execute the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Hold on. I have to start my watch. The same goes for the runner next to me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I won't start until… yes! Signal acquired, away I go.

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

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar industry. Names like Apple Watch are prevalent, featuring an wide array of different models to cater to a spectrum of budgets. Based on how high tech the model you choose, price tags can vary between £100 to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It acts as a friend guiding me."

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

A small sample of the comments people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? Currently, irritating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the trees I'm passing under are blocking my satellite signal.

Millions of us fasten these compact monitors onto our wrists and keep them on all day and night, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our daily steps. Today, they can measure our nightly rest, blood pressure, glucose levels, our body battery.

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

But are they able to 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 metrics and constant notifications just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a a little obsessed with mine," one user confesses.

While she appreciates how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently active enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I have a young baby, there's no point to be notified I'm tired," she says. "That fact is all too clearly."

Couldn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I'm in this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is possibly too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the back of the watch.

They usually project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can monitor capillary action, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that flows through the skin to assess your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the long term.

But how to make sense of these numbers is complex. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying cardiology agrees. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition 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 doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM rose. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their reading rose further.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a vicious cycle."