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An atmosphere of building tension. Apparent is the cold breath exhaled by my rivals as they execute the "starting line" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I need to sort my tracker. As does the guy next to me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… done! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's challenging to see a person without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who use them.

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, featuring an extensive range of various versions to cater to a range of budgets. According to how feature-packed the device you go for, costs can range from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to relax."

"It comforts me… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

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

A small sample of the reactions people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I question what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, irritating. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are interfering with my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us strap these small gadgets onto our arms and use them constantly, apparently comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them solely to give us an rough count of our step count. Now, they can measure our nightly rest, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), our VO2 max.

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they don't track.

But do they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a true reflection of the truth? Do they improve our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of measurements and constant notifications just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite obsessed with mine," an individual admits.

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

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Why doesn't she just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your vitals and analysing your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the back of the watch.

They commonly emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can monitor capillary action, recording your heartbeat. More advanced devices measure changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually prevent illness, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to understand these numbers is complicated. The expert concerns that as more functions are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

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

A health researcher studying cardiology echoes this sentiment. Her work into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM went up. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their anxiety increased again.

"If we see data about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."