Last Night, and the Two Weeks Behind It

Data synced through 2026-08-05. Sleep, HRV, stress, body battery, training readiness and 736 activity sessions, all current.

Last night

Bed 23:20, awake 05:15. Five hours forty-one minutes.

Last night 14-day avg
Sleep 5h41 5h59
Deep 113 min 72 min
REM 11 min 56 min
Sleep score 57 66.7
Resting HR 66 62.5
HRV 37 29.9
Respiration 17.0 19.8
Body battery at wake 46 53.8

Two numbers stand out, and they point in opposite directions.

REM was 11 minutes. The two-week average is 56. Only one night in the last month came in lower. Deep sleep, meanwhile, was 113 minutes, the second-highest reading in four weeks. So the night was not simply short, it was restructured: nearly all of the sleep pressure went into deep, and REM was almost entirely skipped.

Resting heart rate was 66. That is the highest single night in twenty-eight days, and it happened on a night with almost no REM. REM is the stage where heart rate runs high and erratic. A night missing REM should pull average heart rate down, not push it to a monthly peak. That makes 66 more notable, not less.

Suppressed REM, front-loaded deep sleep and elevated heart rate is a recognisable combination – alcohol, a late meal, or an evening room that was too warm all produce it. The data cannot say which. It can say the night was atypical.

Against that, HRV came in at 37 against a weekly baseline of 30, the second-highest single night of the month. Respiration was 17.0, the lowest of the last four weeks. Neither reading suggests systemic strain. Training readiness landed at 62, “moderate”, with only 44 minutes of recovery time outstanding.

The verdict on last night: a poor night structurally, on a body that is otherwise in reasonable shape.

The last two weeks

Comparing 2026-07-23 to 2026-08-05 against the fourteen days before it.

Prev 14 Last 14 Change
Sessions 13 9 -31%
Distance 244.5 km 152.8 km -38%
Training load 377 169 -55%
Acute load 201 133 -34%
Steps/day 12,512 8,464 -32%
Sleep 418 min 359 min -59 min
REM 85 min 56 min -34%
Deep 64 min 72 min +12%
Sleep score 71.1 66.7 -4.4
HRV 27.4 29.9 +9%
Readiness 58.1 64.1 +10%
Resting HR 62.1 62.5 flat
SpO2 avg 95.6 95.8 flat

This is a deload, and the recovery metrics responded the way a deload should make them respond. Training load is down 55 percent. Acute load has fallen from a mid-July peak near 300 to 71 this morning. HRV rose nine percent and training readiness rose ten. Nothing here looks like overreaching.

What did not improve is sleep. An hour less per night on average, with REM down a third. Deep sleep rose slightly, which is what happens when total time shrinks: the body protects deep first and REM is what gets cut. Seven of the last fourteen nights were under six hours, and three were under five and a half.

And resting heart rate did not move. Training volume fell by more than half, HRV improved, readiness improved, and resting heart rate sat at 62.1 then 62.5. In an ordinary deload that number comes down. It did not.

What the two halves say together

The short-term picture is benign. Load is down, HRV is up, readiness is up, and last night’s REM collapse looks like a single bad night rather than a trend.

The medium-term picture is the one worth watching. Resting heart rate is the only marker that has refused to respond to a substantial reduction in training stress, and the sleep debt is the most obvious candidate for why. Six hours a night, sustained, is enough to hold resting heart rate elevated on its own.

The cheapest experiment available: the deload is already in place, so the training variable is controlled. Add an hour of sleep for ten nights and watch whether resting heart rate follows. If it does, the question is answered. If it does not, the cause is somewhere the wrist cannot see.