
Alistair Brownlee
Head of Research
Alistair Brownlee is Head of Research, where he leads large-scale analysis of wearable health data to better understand sleep, recovery and human performance, translating these insights into products that help people live healthier lives.

About
Alistair Brownlee is a Founder of Terra Research, a research initiative built on the Terra API platform that leverages large-scale wearable data to deepen understanding of human performance, recovery and health.
Following an 18-year career as an Olympic champion and elite endurance athlete, Alistair developed a strong interest in the objective measurement of physiology. At Terra Research, he focuses on analysing high-resolution, longitudinal data from a wide range of wearable devices to explore how sleep, heart rate variability, training load and behavioural patterns interact over time.
His work centres on robust, objective metrics, with particular emphasis on relative trends, individual baselining and population-level modelling. Recent areas of focus include sleep regularity, strain–recovery dynamics, seasonal variation in physiological markers, and the development of transparent, interpretable health scoring frameworks. Alongside producing research that is accessible and engaging, he is focused on building products that use data to help people live healthier lives.
By combining elite sport insight with large-scale data science, Terra Research aims to move beyond anecdote and optimisation hacks, building instead an evidence-based understanding of how individuals respond to training, stress and lifestyle interventions. The long-term ambition is to transform wearable data from passive tracking into meaningful, scientifically grounded insight that informs both individual decision-making and broader health research.
Published Research

Simulate Your Next Marathon Race Pace
February 20, 2026

How To Train For Your Next Marathon
February 12, 2026

Seasonal Effects on Sleep Performance
February 11, 2026

The Easier You Train The Faster You Finish
February 5, 2026

How Temperature Predicts Women's Cycle Phases
January 29, 2026

Sleep Metric Variation Across Wearables
January 22, 2026

The January Activity Spike: A two-day Story
January 15, 2026

Sleep Patterns Across the World
January 6, 2026

New Year’s Resolutions Cliff
December 31, 2025

How HRV Actually Works
December 17, 2025

How Do People Really Use Wearables?
December 9, 2025

Benchmarking Wearable Sleep Data Reliability
November 28, 2025

Is Consistency Actually More Important Than Intensity?
October 23, 2025

Which activity metrics actually matter? 28,000+ days analysed
October 9, 2025

Burn More Calories, Sleep Like a Log?
October 2, 2025

GAMM analysis – can complexity tell us anything we don’t already know?
September 25, 2025

Think a good HRV score follows a good night’s sleep? Think again!
September 20, 2025

Descriptive HRV using Z scores
September 19, 2025

Why Mondays Might Be Your Healthiest Day: What 1,000+ Sleepers Taught Us About Recovery
September 18, 2025




