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There's a building tension. Visible is the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they do the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I need to start my tracker. As does the runner next to me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I won't start until… done! GPS ready, I'm off.

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

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion pound sector. Names like Apple Watch dominate, each with an broad selection of diverse devices to cater to a variety of budgets. Based on how advanced the watch you go for, price tags can start from £100 to a small fortune.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to stop checking."

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion supporting me."

"Please don't notify me about a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments I've had from fellow smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? Currently, annoying. It's telling me I'm off pace, causing me to question whether the trees I'm passing under are blocking my satellite signal.

A vast number of us strap these small gadgets onto our arms and keep them on 24/7, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them exclusively to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Now, they can analyse our nightly rest, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

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

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a faithful picture of reality? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I find myself getting a quite fixated with mine," one user reveals.

While she loves how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being productive enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a infant, there's no point to be informed my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of tracking your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, identifying your heartbeat. More advanced devices measure changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to gauge your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically prevent illness, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more susceptible of a stroke in the future.

But how to interpret these readings is not straightforward. The expert worries that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in cardiology echoes this sentiment. A study into the impact of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use healthcare resources".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their reading increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."