Probably just the hr data being off for one reason or another. Data from watches can still be pretty unreliable.
I bought my first watch with a hr monitor a couple months ago (a new garmin 55) and am kinda amazed by how inaccurate it is. I wasn't expecting it to be perfect or anything, but there's barely any consistency for what it shows from day to day.
For example, I did a 6k easy run yesterday at 4:59/k pace and it showed an average hr of 178. Today I did 8k, with the middle 4k at 3:26 pace and the warm up/cooldown at 5:00 and had an average over the run of 166. Both of these were on the same flat river trail...