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A sense of nervous excitement. Apparent is the frosty air coming from my rivals as they do the "pre-race" jiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to start my watch. As does the person alongside me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… yes! GPS ready, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's challenging to find a wrist without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us runners who use them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion pound sector. Brands like Garmin dominate, featuring an extensive selection of different devices to cater to a variety of budgets. According to how advanced the watch you go for, prices can range from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

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

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

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

A handful of the comments I've received from fellow tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

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

A vast number of us strap these small monitors onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're continuously recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an estimation of our step count. Currently, they can track our nightly rest, heart rate, glucose levels, our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the data points we scrutinise a accurate representation of reality? Do they improve our overall health, or do the plethora of metrics and motivational messages just increase our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a bit fixated with mine," an individual reveals.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a pregnancy.

Until she found out she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being productive enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a six-month old, I don't need to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "That fact is perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

How Do They Work?

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of measuring your health metrics and processing your data, but the most use sensors on the back of the watch.

They typically project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can observe blood flow, detecting your pulse rate. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the future.

But how to make sense of these figures is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher studying patient behaviour concurs. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their anxiety rose further.

"If we see data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We look, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."