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There's a building tension. Apparent is the chilled vapour emanating from my fellow runners as they do the "pre-race" wiggle on the beginning point.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local Saturday morning race and I'm focused. It's almost time...

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

The person waiting tuts. I refuse to go until… yes! Connection established, I'm off.

In the mele, it's hard to find a person without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who wear them.

We're witnessing a thriving, massive sector. Names like Apple Watch dominate, each with an extensive array of various devices to fit a range of needs. Based on how advanced the device you choose, price tags can range from £100 to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to switch off."

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

"Stop telling me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

Just some of the reactions I've received from fellow smartwatch wearers when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on my own device? Right now, annoying. It's indicating I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm passing under are disrupting my satellite signal.

Countless individuals of us fasten these little gadgets onto our wrists and wear them constantly, apparently at ease with the fact they're constantly monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them only to give us an idea of our daily steps. Currently, they can measure our sleep patterns, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we analyse a faithful picture of our actual health? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the multitude of measurements and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a a little obsessed with mine," one user confesses.

While she loves how her device records her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, I don't need to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

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

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of monitoring your health metrics and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly project small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can observe blood flow, detecting your heartbeat. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

Expert Perspectives

A data scientist says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could potentially prevent illness, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "anxious healthy".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as further capabilities are added, 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 positive development," he says.

A professor focusing on cardiology concurs. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "far more likely to use healthcare resources".

She observed a cycle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM went up. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We check, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."