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

A swift movement of the hips.

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

Wait a second. I have to start my tracker. As does the person next to me.

The person waiting tuts. I won't start until… yes! GPS ready, I'm off.

Amidst the crowd, it's challenging to spot a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And this isn't only us runners who use them.

We're witnessing a booming, massive industry. Names like Garmin are prevalent, each with an wide range of diverse versions to fit a spectrum of needs. Depending on how feature-packed the model you select, price tags can start from an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I'm unable to relax."

"It provides solace… It acts as a companion guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've experienced a bad night's sleep."

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

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on my own device? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the foliage I'm running below are blocking my GPS connection.

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

A distant memory are the days when we depended on them solely to give us an estimation of our pedometer reading. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, our body battery.

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

But are they able to do what they advertise? And are the statistics we analyse a accurate representation of our actual health? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the plethora of readings and constant notifications just increase our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a quite preoccupied with mine," an individual admits.

While she values how her device tracks her workouts, she finds some of its other capabilities "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 repeatedly informed her she was not being energetic enough. Now, the watch frequently reports her she's had a bad night's sleep.

"I have a six-month old, it's unnecessary for me to be told my sleep was poor," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she says. "I love it for its workout tracking, but I'm unsure whether the additional features it can now do is possibly overkill for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

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

They typically emit small, green LED lights onto your skin which can detect blood flow, detecting your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to gauge your recovery state.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that in general for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the continuously improving tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we feel unwell", it could also turn us the tracked into the "anxious healthy".

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

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

But how to interpret these readings is not straightforward. The expert fears that as more functions are added, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I have some doubts that the ability to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A professor studying cardiology concurs. A study into the influence of wearable tech on a set of cardiovascular patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced greater stress and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She observed a pattern with her patients - they spotted a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse increased. They got more worried. They re-examined the data, and their anxiety increased again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, of course, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We look, we re-check - it becomes a feedback loop."