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

A swift twitch of the hips.

I'm participating in my local weekly parkrun event and I'm serious. Three, two, one...

Hold on. I need to sort my watch. The same goes for the guy next to me.

The person behind us sighs. I won't start until… there! Connection established, and I'm running.

In the mele, it's challenging to see a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us participants who use them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion pound industry. Companies like Samsung Galaxy dominate, all offering an extensive array of different versions to fit a variety of needs. According to how high tech the device you choose, price tags can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to stop checking."

"It reassures me… It feels like a supporter encouraging me."

"I wish it wouldn't say about a poor sleep."

Just some of the comments I've received from other smartwatch wearers when I question what they think of theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My thoughts on mine? Currently, frustrating. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my location tracking.

Millions of us attach these small monitors onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, ostensibly comfortable with the fact they're perpetually recording us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can measure our nightly rest, heart rate, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

It's a challenge to find a health indicator they aren't designed to measure.

But do they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we obsess over a accurate representation of reality? Do they boost our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of readings and motivational messages just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Complicated Bond

"I become a quite preoccupied with mine," one user confesses.

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

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was not being productive enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I have a infant, I don't need to be notified I've not slept," she says. "I know that only too well."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I value it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the myriad other functions it can now do is possibly overkill 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 most use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically project small, green LED lights onto your skin which can detect blood flow, detecting your heartbeat. Higher-end devices detect changes in the electrical current that flows through the skin to get an idea of your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the ever-evolving tech could potentially aid early diagnosis, "identifying issues before we show symptoms", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that the most advanced wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can notify if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not automatically signal someone is about to have a heart attack, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the future.

But how to interpret these figures is not straightforward. The expert fears that as additional features are introduced, people may not be able to fully comprehend their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher specialising in patient behaviour concurs. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a specific group of heart condition patients suggested a minority of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use medical services".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They felt anxious. Their heart rate rose. They got even more concerned. They checked again, and their heart rate rose further.

"When people are presented with data about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."