Heart rate jumped up 20 bpm on my easy run pace the past two days.

Twenty beats is a lot. Likely causes in order of probability.

1. Low grade flu. Do you have scratchy throat? Runny nose? Achy?

2. Not recovered from previous hard run. Even though it may have seemed no harder at the time, running stress can be cumulative... not just how you felt on that one run.

3. Not enough sleep. Stress? Over training? Sat in a car/plane for several hours?

Could be dehydration. If blood volume is low, your heart has to increase to maintain blood pressure.

Your body is adapting nicely. Ideally you would like you heart to beating at its maximum all the time for full benefits. The reason elite athletes stop improving is because their heart gets larger and starts beating slower.

I would guess a low grade flu or fatigue as well. Maybe take a day off and see how that affects your heart rate. But going by heart rate until whatever is going on passes is a good idea

I've been getting about 6 hours of sleep night now that you mentioned it. I don't have any signs of a cold or anything. I've been following Daniels workout plan which has back to back workouts. One day is intervals followed by tempo paced runs the next day. I've been doing my easy runs always easy prior to that. I do have some levels of stress coming up that I do think may be playing a bigger role than I thought. Perhaps I'm not taking post nutrition as serious as I should too. I noticed the first sign this past Monday and blew it off. Took a day off from running this past Tuesday. Did my intervals yesterday (Wednesday) and my tempo run today. In all my warm up runs my heart rate was near 160bpm and it was my normal slow easy pace. My tempo run hit up to 195 today (i know definitely higher than it should have been but wanted to get it done) i have two easy days up next and probably gonna just keep it at 140 bpm regardless of the pace and hope i can get myself back under control. All my vdot paces are well within my capabilities since I easily did them a week ago, i think you're right about the lack of sleep and I have a huge stress coming up next week and it's been playing in the back of my mind this week.

Sounds like you're going to die soon, bro.

Get 8 hrs sleep.

Post workout nutrition - fix it.

Hydrate.

Record a.m. and p.m. resting heart rate.

Record post workout 1-minute and 2-minute recovery heart rate, using 120 bpm as your focus.

No matter what HR you hit during a workout, if your Rec1min is 120, and Rec2min is 110 or lower, you should recover to your resting HR within 12 to 16 hours if that morning's resting HR was at your low normal.

If your Rec2min is just 120, that was a pretty hard workout.

If your Rec2min is, say 130 or higher, that was a VERY demanding workout or hard race.