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There's a building tension. Visible is the frosty air emanating from my fellow runners as they do the "pre-race" wiggle on the start line.

A swift twitch of the hips.

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

Hold on. I have to sort my watch. As does the person alongside me.

The person in the line tuts. I refuse to go until… done! Connection established, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's challenging to find a person without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us participants who wear them.

This is a explosive, massive sector. Brands like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, each with an wide range of different devices to fit a spectrum of lifestyles. Based on how advanced the watch you select, prices can vary between an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I can't relax."

"It reassures me… It feels like a companion guiding me."

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

A small sample of the reactions I've had from fellow device users when I question what they think of theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Currently, irritating. It's reporting my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm passing under are blocking my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these compact devices onto our arms and use them all day and night, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're constantly tracking us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Now, they can analyse our sleep patterns, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

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

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we analyse a faithful picture of reality? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of metrics and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a bit obsessed with mine," a wearer admits.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch insists her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, there's no point to be notified I'm tired," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your vitals and processing your data, but the vast bulk use detectors on the back of the watch.

They typically shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your arm which can detect pulsation, detecting your pulse rate. Sophisticated devices measure changes in the electrical current that passes over the skin to assess your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we show symptoms", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like heart rhythm analysis, which constantly monitor how stable the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic electrical activity in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not mean someone is about to have a cardiac event, but it can give an early warning they might be more at risk of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to understand these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist studying wearable tech concurs. Research into the impact of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, of course, we are going to want to know more," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."