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A sense of nervous excitement. Visible is the chilled vapour exhaled by my competitors as they perform the "starting line" jiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. The countdown begins...

Oh, hang on. I have to adjust my device. The same goes for the guy alongside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, I'm off.

During the scramble, it's challenging to find a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And it's not just us participants who wear them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar sector. Companies like Apple Watch lead the market, featuring an wide range of different models to suit a variety of needs. Based on how high tech the device you go for, price tags can vary between an affordable sum to a small fortune.

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

"It comforts me… It's like a companion encouraging me."

"I wish it wouldn't say about a restless night."

A handful of the reactions I've had from other tracker enthusiasts when I inquire what they think of theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My feelings on mine? Right now, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

A vast number of us strap these small monitors onto our arms and keep them on 24/7, ostensibly at ease with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we used them only to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Now, they can track our nightly rest, heart rate, glucose levels, our body battery.

It's difficult to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they advertise? And are the statistics we obsess over a faithful picture of the truth? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the multitude of metrics and motivational messages just increase our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a bit fixated with mine," a wearer admits.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be active enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be notified my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I suppose I could, I suppose, but I'm in this push-pull dynamic with it," she says. "I value it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your vitals and analysing your data, but the most use sensors on the back of the watch.

They typically project small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, recording your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to gauge your nervous system activity.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could realistically save lives, "detecting disease before we feel unwell", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly 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 irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more at risk of a stroke in the years to come.

But how to make sense of these numbers is complicated. The expert worries that as more functions are introduced, people may struggle to fully understand their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so many things is such a good idea," he says.

A health researcher specialising in wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "more inclined to use medical services".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we don't really understand then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."