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There's a nervous excitement. I can see the frosty air emanating from my fellow runners as they execute the "pre-race" wiggle on the start line.

A rapid flick of the hips.

I'm participating in my local Saturday morning race and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I have to sort my device. The same goes for the guy alongside me.

The person in the line expresses impatience. I'm not moving until… there! Signal acquired, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's hard to spot a person without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us participants who use them.

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar market. Brands like Garmin dominate, all offering an broad selection of various models to suit a variety of budgets. Depending on how advanced the device you go for, prices can vary between a hundred pounds to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, I can't switch off."

"It provides solace… It feels like a companion supporting me."

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

Just some of the comments I've received from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I question what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My feelings on mine? Right now, annoying. It's reporting I'm not hitting my target, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm passing under are interfering with my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us strap these little gadgets onto our arms and use them constantly, seemingly at ease with the fact they're perpetually tracking us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them solely to give us an estimation of our daily steps. Now, they can analyse our sleep patterns, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a health indicator they don't track.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the data points we analyse a accurate representation of the truth? Do they enhance our daily wellness, or do the plethora of metrics and constant notifications just contribute to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I become a quite obsessed with mine," an individual admits.

While she values how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other functions "overwhelming" at times - a feeling initially realised during a major life event.

Prior to discovering she could put it into a specific mode, her smartwatch kept telling her she was not being active enough. Later on, the watch keeps telling her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I am caring for a young baby, I don't need to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Couldn't she just remove it?

"It's possible, theoretically, but I've got this complicated dynamic with it," she says. "I love it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the myriad other functions it can now do is maybe excessive for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your health metrics and interpreting your data, but the majority use sensors on the back of the watch.

They usually project tiny, coloured LED lights onto your skin which can monitor capillary action, detecting your heartbeat. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

A Fine Balance

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "delicate equilibrium" - while the ever-evolving tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us watch wearers into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can conduct tests like medical-grade monitoring, which regularly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing a heart arrhythmia, where there is erratic impulses in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more at risk of a heart problem in the future.

But how to make sense of these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are introduced, people may struggle to fully understand their data.

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so much data is such a beneficial thing," he says.

A health researcher focusing on cardiology echoes this sentiment. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a set of individuals with health issues suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced greater stress and were "far more likely to use medical services".

She noted a pattern with her patients - they noticed a concerning reading on their watch. They grew concerned. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They looked a second time, and their heart rate increased again.

"If we see stats about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."