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There's a building tension. Visible is the chilled vapour emanating from my competitors as they perform the "starting line" wiggle on the beginning point.

A swift movement of the hips.

I'm lined up for my local weekly parkrun event and I mean business. It's almost time...

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

The person waiting expresses impatience. I won't start until… yes! GPS ready, and I'm running.

During the scramble, it's difficult to see a wrist without a smartwatch on it. And this isn't only us athletes who use them.

This is a thriving, multi-billion pound market. Brands like Samsung Galaxy lead the market, all offering an wide array of various devices to suit a spectrum of needs. Based on how high tech the watch you go for, prices can start from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, I'm unable to switch off."

"It reassures me… It acts as a companion guiding me."

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

A small sample of the responses people have shared from other tracker enthusiasts when I ask what they feel about theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? At this moment, frustrating. It's indicating I'm off pace, making me wonder whether the foliage I'm running below are disrupting my GPS connection.

Countless individuals of us fasten these little gadgets onto our arms and use them 24/7, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Long past are the days when we relied on them solely to give us an idea of our pedometer reading. Currently, they can track our nightly rest, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a bodily function they fail to monitor.

But can they do what they claim to do? And are the numbers we scrutinise a faithful picture of the truth? Do they enhance our mental and physical wellbeing, or do the multitude of metrics and constant notifications just increase our everyday anxiety?

Addiction or Aid?

"I do get a quite preoccupied with mine," one user admits.

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

Before she realised she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was failing to be energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch insists her she's had a poor sleep score.

"I've got a infant, it's unnecessary for me to be informed I've not slept," she says. "I know that all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just take it off?

"It's possible, I suppose, but I have this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I love it for its exercise data, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is maybe too much for me."

The Technology Behind the Tracking

Every device of smartwatch has its own unique way of tracking your bodily functions and analysing your data, but the most use detectors on the reverse of the watch.

They typically emit minute LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, detecting your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the bioimpedance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

A professor says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the rapidly advancing tech could actually save lives, "identifying issues before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like medical-grade monitoring, which constantly monitor how normal the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not automatically signal someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an advance notice they might be more vulnerable of a heart problem in the years to come.

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

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so many things is such a positive development," he says.

A clinical psychologist specialising in wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Her work into the effect 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 "more inclined to use medical services".

She noted a cycle with her patients - they noticed a alarming metric on their watch. They grew concerned. Their BPM went up. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their heart rate rose further.

"Upon viewing data about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to become concerned," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."