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An atmosphere of nervous excitement. Visible is the frosty air coming from my rivals as they execute the "starting line" shuffle on the start line.

A quick flick of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I mean business. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I must adjust my watch. So does the guy alongside me.

The person behind us sighs. I refuse to go until… there! Connection established, I'm off.

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

This is a explosive, multi-billion dollar market. Names like Garmin lead the market, all offering an wide array of different models to fit a range of budgets. Depending on how advanced the device you select, costs can vary between an affordable sum to thousands of pounds.

"It drives me insane, it's impossible to stop checking."

"It provides solace… It's like a companion guiding me."

"Stop telling me about a restless night."

A handful of the responses people have shared from like-minded tracker enthusiasts when I question what they their opinion is on theirs.

The Data Dilemma

My thoughts on mine? At this moment, irritating. It's indicating my speed is wrong, causing me to question whether the foliage along my route are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these small devices onto our wrists and wear them 24/7, ostensibly unconcerned with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

Gone are the days when we relied on them only to give us an idea of our daily steps. Today, they can track our sleep patterns, blood pressure, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's tricky to find a physical metric they aren't designed to measure.

But can they do what they advertise? And are the data points we analyse a accurate representation of the truth? Do they enhance our overall health, or do the plethora of metrics and motivational messages just contribute to our everyday anxiety?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I do get a a little fixated with mine," one user admits.

While she appreciates how her device tracks her runs, she finds some of its other capabilities "daunting" at times - a feeling first discovered during a pregnancy.

Before she realised she could change its configuration, her smartwatch constantly alerted her she was failing to be energetic enough. Now, the watch keeps telling her she's had a restless night.

"I have a six-month old, there's no point to be informed I'm tired," she says. "I know that only too well."

Why doesn't she just remove it?

"I could, I suppose, but I'm in this love-hate relationship with it," she continues. "I value it for its workout tracking, I sometimes question whether all the other things it can now do is perhaps excessive for me."

Inside the Device

Different brands of smartwatch has its own novel way of tracking your vitals and analysing your data, but the most use sensors on the reverse of the watch.

They usually shine minute LED lights onto your wrist which can observe pulsation, detecting your BPM. Higher-end devices detect changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to assess your stress levels.

The Professional Viewpoint

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

He points out that newer wearables can perform tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can flag if someone is experiencing an irregular rhythm, where there is abnormal signals in the heart causing an irregular heartbeat.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is imminently going to suffer a heart attack, but it can give an early warning they might be more vulnerable of a stroke in the long term.

But how to understand these figures is complicated. The expert concerns that as more functions are introduced, people may find it hard to fully comprehend their data.

"I remain sceptical that the ability to monitor so much data is such a good idea," he says.

A professor focusing on patient behaviour concurs. A study into the effect of wearable tech on a set of heart condition patients suggested a significant portion of those who were given devices to monitor their condition experienced heightened worry and were "more inclined to use doctor's time".

She observed a vicious circle with her patients - they spotted a worrying figure on their watch. They became worried. Their pulse went up. They got increasingly anxious. They checked again, and their heart rate went up again.

"Upon viewing numbers about ourselves that we lack context for then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we re-check - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."