You know how they say, "third time's a charm"? That proved to be unbelievably true when it came to my half marathon recovery. It went like this: first race, figuring it out; second race, totally blew it; third race, BINGO.
Very much like Goldilocks, it took a little trial and error, including totally destroying my body on round two. But I learned from my failures, and I'm here to help you not make my mistakes. Here's how you recover from a half marathon to prevent that crippling, I-got-hit-by-a-truck soreness for three days after running the 13.1 miles.
All of that said, none of this will truly help if you don't train. The biggest mistake I made on race number two was not training and jumping straight into 13 unprepared miles (the 0.1 was manageable) — skipping your training runs is like getting in the express lane to torture town. Do yourself a favor and warm up your body with a solid half marathon training program. Postrace you will thank prerace you for the preparation.