Put the Healing Before the Horse

Sometimes when you run a half marathon and your quads are shredded afterward, you feel good about it.  And sometimes you don't.
If you've prepared well, i.e. worked hard to listen to your body, pushed just enough, recovered productively, and laid out a mental plan, you've had a race of which to be proud.  In this case you relish having to hold on to the sink while lowering your tender glutes to the toilet.
Flip that coin over (your race did NOT leave you in a good mental or emotional place for various reasons), and you are cursing at the effort getting out of your car and crying at the sight of your foam roller.  You feel like shit and are annoyed with yourself, your exploded muscles, and gravity in general.
The mindset you take in your recovery is the lace that ties your good and bad racing experiences together; the way to approach healing your body is the same whether you've achieved a personal best time or walked through a windstorm when you'd intended to fly to the finish line.
Begin by honoring your body's need to heal and the time it requires to do so.  This includes letting your current level of fitness be and minding what hurts, when it pains you, and for how long.  Then you can determine when and how to be active:  maybe yoga, maybe a run, perhaps a nap.  To rebuild your workout schedule too quickly will only extend the healing time; train when your body feels good again, not just good enough.  You wouldn't accept an effort that's "good enough" in a race - don't allow that standard to govern your recovery, either.  If you don't have faith that you will heal, how can you ask your body to break down and rebuild as you gain fitness?
We are always in a state of healing, be it potential or active.  The human body continuously allows cells to die regenerates them, thus giving us the potential to recover from whatever might befall us.  In this state of potential healing, we can improve fitness, but only to the point which we believe (consciously and subconsciously) that we can rebuild our tissue and recover from training.  When we race or overdo it in a workout or a training program, we come into a state of active healing in which we can, at best, retain our current level of fitness, and at worst have to avoid our sport or activity of choice altogether.
Take each workout as  a real-time fitness yardstick:  What can I do today for my body?  Will my workout help me to heal or to improve my fitness?   Be mindful of whether your body desires a push to reap athletic benefits or simply to focus on regeneration to prepare for future workouts (which may in crude more healing and repairing until you are fully recovered).  Then, tear up the roads and the quads knowing you can trust yourself to bounce back.