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There's a feeling of anticipation. I can see the chilled vapour emanating from my competitors as they perform the "about to run" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

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

Hold on. I have to start my device. So does the guy next to me.

The person waiting expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… there! GPS ready, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a person without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who wear them.

It's a explosive, multi-billion dollar market. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an extensive array of various versions to cater to a spectrum of needs. Based on how advanced the watch you select, costs can vary between an affordable sum to a significant investment.

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

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

"Stop telling me I've had a restless night."

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

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Right now, irritating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the trees I'm passing under are blocking my GPS connection.

Millions of us fasten these little gadgets onto our wrists and keep them on constantly, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're continuously recording us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Now, they can track our nightly rest, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

It's difficult to find a bodily function they don't track.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the numbers we scrutinise a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the plethora of metrics and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a quite fixated with mine," one user reveals.

While she loves how her device tracks her exercise, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being active enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a young baby, I don't need to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine minute LED lights onto your arm which can monitor pulsation, detecting your heartbeat. Higher-end devices analyse changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which continuously monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not automatically signal someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the future.

But how to interpret these readings is complex. The expert concerns that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher focusing on wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She identified a pattern with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM increased. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their reading increased again.

"When people are presented with stats about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."