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A sense of building tension. Apparent is the frosty air emanating from my competitors as they do the "starting line" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I must start my tracker. The same goes for the guy next to me.

The person behind us tuts. I won't start until… yes! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's hard to find a person without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us runners who rely on them.

We're witnessing a explosive, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Garmin dominate, featuring an wide selection of different devices to fit a variety of budgets. Depending on how advanced the watch you choose, price tags can range from a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

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

"It comforts me… It acts as a supporter guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

A handful of the comments I've had from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on my own device? Right now, frustrating. It's telling me I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us attach these small gadgets onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, seemingly at ease with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an rough count of our step count. Now, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they don't track.

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the data points we analyse a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the avalanche of measurements and motivational messages just add to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

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

While she loves how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be told I'm tired," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I could, I suppose, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

How Do They Work?

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the majority use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They usually project minute LED lights onto your arm which can monitor blood flow, identifying your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the future.

But how to make sense of these readings is complicated. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A health researcher focusing on wearable tech agrees. Her work into the impact 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 increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate increased. They got more worried. They checked again, and their reading went up again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."