You often hear of athletes or sports persons getting a “second wind”, how is this?
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Your circadian rhythm is a 24-hour biological clock that controls how alert you feel. It fluctuates throughout the day, sending out “circadian alerting signals.” These alerting signals can either ramp up and override your sleep drive (keeping you awake) or quiet down and allow you to succumb to it (causing you to feel sleepy). Once you’ve been up for 14 or 15 hours, your internal clock has to work hard to keep you awake. (Since your sleep drive is now very high.) As a result, your circadian alerting signal is at its highest in the last few hours before bedtime. Our master clock wants cues for it to stop promoting wakefulness. It wants us to go to bed at the same time each night and follow a familiar bedtime routine.
No one knows exactly why this happens, but one theory is that there’s an evolutionary benefit: Instead of falling asleep right when the sun goes down, your second wind ensures you have enough energy to prepare a safe place to sleep (put wood on the fire, check your environment, make sure your kids are good, cover the opening of your cave).
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