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A sense of feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the cold breath coming from my rivals as they execute the "about to run" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local weekly parkrun event and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I have to sort my tracker. So does the runner next to me.

The person behind us tuts. I refuse to go until… done! GPS ready, away I go.

During the scramble, it's hard to spot a arm without a wearable on it. And it's not just us athletes who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, multi-billion dollar market. Brands like Apple Watch dominate, featuring an wide selection of diverse models to suit a range of needs. Based on how feature-packed the model you choose, costs can range from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

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

"It provides solace… It's like a friend guiding me."

"Stop telling me I've experienced a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments I've had from like-minded device users when I question what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's indicating I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the trees I'm running below are interfering with my GPS connection.

A vast number of us fasten these compact gadgets onto our arms and wear them constantly, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're continuously recording us.

Gone are the days when we used them solely to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they fail to monitor.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the data points we analyse a true reflection of our actual health? Do they boost our overall health, or do the plethora of measurements and cheerleading alerts just increase our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

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

While she values how her device monitors her exercise, she finds some of its other functions "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I've got a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I love it for its exercise data, but I'm unsure whether all the other things it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

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

They commonly shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can detect capillary action, detecting your pulse rate. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal electrical activity in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to interpret these numbers is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are incorporated, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

"I have some doubts that being able to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in patient behaviour agrees. Her work into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM rose. They got more worried. They looked a second time, and their anxiety went up again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, naturally, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."