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There's a nervous excitement. Apparent is the frosty air coming from my rivals as they do the "pre-race" wiggle on the starting line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm focused. The countdown begins...

Wait a second. I have to sort my tracker. The same goes for the runner beside me.

The person in the line tuts. I won't start until… yes! Connection established, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's hard to spot a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us runners who use them.

This is a explosive, massive industry. Names like Garmin are prevalent, each with an broad selection of different versions to suit a variety of budgets. According to how advanced the model you go for, costs can range from an affordable sum to a small fortune.

"I find it infuriating, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It's like a supporter guiding me."

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

A small sample of the reactions people have shared from fellow smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Currently, annoying. It's reporting my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches I'm running below are blocking my location tracking.

A vast number of us fasten these small devices onto our wrists and use them constantly, apparently unconcerned with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we depended on them exclusively to give us an idea of our daily steps. Now, they can track our sleep quality, stress levels, heart rate variability (HRV), our recovery score.

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

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the statistics we analyse a faithful picture of reality? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the plethora of readings and cheerleading alerts just add to our daily stresses?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a a little obsessed with mine," one user admits.

While she values how her device records her exercise, she finds some of its other features "overwhelming" at times - a feeling first discovered during a major life event.

Until she found out she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was being insufficiently active enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware perfectly well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"It's possible, perhaps, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she continues. "I appreciate it for its workout tracking, I just wonder whether the additional features it can now do is maybe overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the majority use optical sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine tiny, coloured LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor capillary action, detecting your pulse rate. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that flows through the skin to assess your recovery state.

A Fine Balance

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially save lives, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us device users into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is irregular impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the years to come.

But how to interpret these figures is complicated. The expert worries that as additional features are introduced, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that having the capacity to monitor so many metrics is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A professor studying cardiology agrees. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a specific group of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use doctor's time".

She identified a cycle with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their heart rate increased. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate rose further.

"Upon viewing stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we obsess - it becomes a feedback loop."