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A sense of building tension. Apparent is the cold breath emanating from my rivals as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

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

Oh, hang on. I have to adjust my watch. So does the runner beside me.

The person in the line tuts. I'm not moving until… yes! Connection established, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to spot a person without a wearable on it. And it's not just us participants who rely on them.

This is a booming, massive industry. Names like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an broad selection of various devices to cater to a spectrum of lifestyles. Depending on how advanced the device you go for, prices can range from a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It comforts me… It feels like a companion encouraging me."

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

A handful of the responses I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's telling me I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the overhead branches I'm running below are blocking my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us strap these compact gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on constantly, apparently at ease with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them only to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, stress levels, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

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

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we analyse a faithful picture of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of readings and motivational messages just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a six-month old, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is maybe too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your health metrics and processing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, recording your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to gauge your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "worried well".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate 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 years to come.

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

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher studying wearable tech echoes this sentiment. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

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

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."