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An atmosphere of building tension. Apparent is the cold breath exhaled by my competitors as they do the "pre-race" jiggle on the starting line.

A quick movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Wait a second. I have to start my device. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… yes! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to spot a person without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.

This is a explosive, massive industry. Companies like Garmin dominate, each with an extensive range of diverse versions to fit a variety of budgets. According to how advanced the model you choose, costs can vary between £100 to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, I can't relax."

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

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

Just some of the reactions I've had from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I ask what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? Currently, irritating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these small monitors onto our arms and wear them constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them only to give us an estimation of our step count. Now, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the data points we obsess over a true reflection of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just increase our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a bit obsessed with mine," a wearer reveals.

While she appreciates how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently productive enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a young baby, it's unnecessary for me to be told I've not slept," she says. "I know that perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

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

They usually shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can observe pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. More advanced devices measure changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how stable the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to interpret these figures is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are incorporated, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on patient behaviour concurs. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She noted a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM rose. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."