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There's a feeling of anticipation. Apparent is the chilled vapour coming from my competitors as they execute the "starting line" shuffle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I need to adjust my tracker. As does the guy beside me.

The person behind us tuts. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

Amidst the crowd, it's difficult to see a arm without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us runners who rely on them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Names like Garmin are prevalent, each with an wide selection of different devices to fit a variety of needs. Depending on how feature-packed the device you go for, costs can start from £100 to a small fortune.

"It makes me crazy, I can't stop checking."

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

"I wish it wouldn't say I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the reactions people have shared from fellow smartwatch wearers when I question what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My thoughts on mine? Currently, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the trees I'm passing under are blocking my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us attach these little gadgets onto our arms and keep them on constantly, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can track our sleep quality, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our VO2 max.

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

But can they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they boost our overall health, or do the avalanche of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our sense of overwhelm?

Addiction or Aid?

"I become a quite preoccupied with mine," one user confesses.

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

Before she realised she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was not being productive enough. Now, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a six-month old, I don't need to be told I'm tired," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your vitals and processing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually emit tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to gauge your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could actually aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not mean someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to make sense of these numbers is not straightforward. The expert concerns that as additional features are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully contextualise their data.

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

A clinical psychologist studying wearable tech concurs. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They felt anxious. Their pulse went up. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their reading went up again.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."