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A sense of building tension. I can see the frosty air exhaled by my fellow runners as they do the "pre-race" shuffle on the beginning point.

A swift flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to adjust my tracker. As does the person alongside me.

The person in the line sighs. I'm not moving until… there! Signal acquired, away I go.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to see a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this extends beyond us athletes who wear them.

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar sector. Brands like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, each with an wide array of diverse models to fit a range of budgets. Based on how feature-packed the model you select, price tags can start from an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It makes me crazy, I'm unable to relax."

"It reassures me… It acts as a friend encouraging me."

"Stop telling me I've experienced a poor sleep."

A small sample of the reactions I've had from other smartwatch wearers when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? Currently, irritating. It's telling me I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my satellite signal.

A vast number of us fasten these little devices onto our arms and use them constantly, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

Gone are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an idea of our daily steps. Currently, they can measure our sleep patterns, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

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

But do they do what they say they do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a true reflection of the truth? Do they boost our overall health, or do the multitude of readings and cheerleading alerts just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I do get a bit obsessed with mine," an individual reveals.

While she appreciates how her device records her runs, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

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

"I have a infant, there's no point to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she explains. "I appreciate it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of monitoring your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the vast bulk use sensors on the underside of the watch.

They usually project small, green LED lights onto your wrist which can detect pulsation, detecting your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices detect changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to assess your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

A data scientist says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "detecting disease before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is erratic signals in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a stroke in the long term.

But how to make sense of these figures is complicated. The expert worries that as further capabilities are added, people may struggle to fully contextualise their data.

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

A clinical psychologist focusing on cardiology echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of individuals with health issues suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced heightened worry and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they saw a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM went up. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their reading went up again.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."