Canuck,

Welcome to NeuroTalk.

I have never seen anything that uses RHR as an indicator or recovery. Your changes appear to be opposite of what would be expected. You don'tsay what the changes are so they could be just normal fluctuations. According to Mayo, Keep in mind that the RHR number can be influenced by many factors, including stress and anxiety, circulating hormones, and medications such as antidepressants and blood pressure drugs.

Your head bump and setback could be a result of anxiety/stress hormones increasing and once they returned to normal, a drop in RHR would expected.

I think you should be careful about following your RHR. Paying too much attention can feed an OCD-anxiety issue. The more valuable heart rate is the one that accompanies an increase in symptoms. Checking your max heart rate after a physical effort to note how much your system will tolerate without an increase in symptoms is worthwhile. That is part of the Buffalo Protocol of recovery.