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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the cold breath exhaled by my fellow runners as they do the "starting line" shuffle on the starting line.

A rapid twitch of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Hold on. I have to start my watch. So does the person alongside me.

The person behind us expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… yes! Signal acquired, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this extends beyond us runners who wear them.

It's a booming, massive industry. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an broad array of various models to fit a spectrum of budgets. According to how feature-packed the watch you choose, prices can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It makes me crazy, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It's like a friend supporting me."

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

Just some of the comments I've had from like-minded smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, making me wonder whether the foliage along my route are interfering with my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us fasten these compact monitors onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, apparently at ease with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an rough count of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can analyse our nightly rest, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), our body battery.

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

But are they able to do what they say they do? And are the numbers we analyse a accurate representation of reality? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and motivational messages just add to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a a little fixated with mine," one user admits.

While she appreciates how her device monitors her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "excessive" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a pregnancy.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being active 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've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Is it not possible to just remove it?

"I could, theoretically, but I have this complicated dynamic with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its exercise data, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Different brands of smartwatch has its own unique way of measuring your vitals and analysing your data, but the majority use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor capillary action, identifying your heartbeat. Higher-end devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that runs through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

A data scientist says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially prevent illness, "spotting abnormalities before we notice anything", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that some of the latest wearables can perform tests like heart rhythm analysis, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.

But how to understand these figures is complex. The expert fears that as more functions are introduced, people may struggle to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist focusing on wearable tech concurs. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their BPM rose. They got increasingly anxious. They re-examined the data, and their reading went up again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a vicious cycle."