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There's a feeling of anticipation. Visible is the chilled vapour emanating from my rivals as they perform the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Hold on. I need to adjust my tracker. The same goes for the runner alongside me.

The person behind us tuts. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who use them.

We're witnessing a explosive, massive industry. Companies like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an broad array of various models to fit a variety of lifestyles. Depending on how advanced the watch you choose, costs can start from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

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

"It provides solace… It acts as a companion guiding me."

"Please don't notify me about a restless night."

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

A Sea of Statistics

My current opinion on mine? At this moment, irritating. It's reporting I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm passing under are blocking my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these compact monitors onto our arms and use them constantly, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously recording us.

Gone are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our step count. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the statistics we obsess over a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and constant notifications just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little obsessed with mine," a wearer admits.

While she values how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I've got a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I love it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and interpreting your data, but the majority use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They usually project minute LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor pulsation, identifying your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the future.

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

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so much data is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group 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 cycle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."