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A sense of building tension. Apparent is the cold breath coming from my rivals as they perform the "starting line" wiggle on the starting line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I have to start my device. As does the guy next to me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, I'm off.

In the mele, it's challenging to find a arm without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion dollar market. Brands like Garmin lead the market, each with an wide array of different models to suit a spectrum of lifestyles. Depending on how advanced the watch you choose, prices can vary between a hundred pounds to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter guiding me."

"I wish it wouldn't say about a poor sleep."

A handful of the reactions people have shared from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? At this moment, annoying. It's reporting my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm running below are blocking my satellite signal.

A vast number of us fasten these compact devices onto our arms and use them all day and night, apparently comfortable with the fact they're perpetually monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an idea of our step count. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

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

But do they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a faithful picture of reality? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the multitude of measurements and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our daily stresses?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," one user admits.

While she loves how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a significant period.

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently active enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be notified I'm tired," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Couldn't she just take it off?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I love it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

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

They commonly shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can detect blood flow, recording your BPM. Higher-end devices measure changes in the electrical current that runs through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the years to come.

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

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A professor specialising in wearable tech agrees. Research into the effect of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM increased. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."