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There's a nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air coming from my rivals as they perform the "starting line" wiggle on the beginning point.

A quick twitch of the hips.

I'm at my local Saturday morning race and I mean business. Three, two, one...

Oh, hang on. I must sort my watch. So does the person next to me.

The person waiting sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, away I go.

In the mele, it's challenging to find a arm without a wearable on it. And this extends beyond us participants who use them.

We're witnessing a booming, multi-billion dollar industry. Companies like Garmin dominate, all offering an extensive range of various devices to cater to a spectrum of budgets. Depending on how feature-packed the watch you choose, prices can vary between an affordable sum to a significant investment.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to switch off."

"It comforts me… It acts as a companion supporting me."

"I wish it wouldn't say about a restless night."

Just some of the comments I've received from other tracker enthusiasts when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

A Sea of Statistics

My feelings on my own device? At this moment, frustrating. It's telling me my speed is wrong, leading me to doubt whether the overhead branches along my route are blocking my location tracking.

Countless individuals of us fasten these compact gadgets onto our wrists and wear them all day and night, seemingly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously tracking us.

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

It's a challenge to find a physical metric they don't track.

But can they do what they say they do? And are the statistics we scrutinise a accurate representation of the truth? Do they improve our daily wellness, or do the plethora of metrics and motivational messages just add to our daily stresses?

A Complicated Bond

"I find myself getting a quite preoccupied with mine," a wearer confesses.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other features "excessive" at times - a feeling first discovered during a significant period.

Prior to discovering she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch repeatedly informed her she was failing to be active enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a infant, I don't need to be informed I've not slept," she says. "That fact is only too well."

Why doesn't she just take it off?

"I suppose I could, perhaps, but I've got this push-pull dynamic with it," she continues. "I love it for its fitness insights, I just wonder whether all the other things it can now do is possibly too much for me."

How Do They Work?

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your bodily functions and processing your data, but the most use detectors on the underside of the watch.

They commonly emit minute LED lights onto your arm which can detect blood flow, identifying your BPM. Sophisticated devices analyse changes in the skin conductance that runs through the skin to assess your recovery state.

Expert Perspectives

One expert says that for most people for smartwatches, it's a "difficult line" - while the rapidly advancing tech could potentially save lives, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "worried well".

He points out that newer wearables can perform 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 irregular impulses in the heart causing an arrhythmia.

This does not mean someone is imminently going to suffer a cardiac event, but it can give an preliminary indication they might be more vulnerable of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to make sense of these numbers is not straightforward. The expert worries that as more functions are added, people may not be able to fully contextualise their data.

"I remain sceptical that being able to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A professor focusing on patient behaviour agrees. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their cardiac function experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use doctor's time".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they noticed a worrying figure on their watch. They grew concerned. Their heart rate rose. They got even more concerned. They looked a second time, and their reading went up again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, understandably, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We check, we obsess - it becomes a vicious cycle."