Seeking Piriformis Relief

I have come to the conclusion that the battle for piriformis relief is going to be long and arduous.

My problem started about 2.5 years ago, and I’ve come to believe its related to my cycling.  I have no proof that cycling was responsible, other than to say that the pain in my hip and lower back began after I took up the sport.  I would have expected that if the cycling was responsible, that the discomfort would have subsided after I quit cycling, but that has not been the case.  I have only been on my bike a handful of times in the last 12 months.  If anyone has any pearls of wisdom here, I’d love to hear them.

I talked with my doctor, and he suggested anti-inflammatories, which I’ve tried.  They alleviate the discomfort, but only for the short term.  I eventually moved on to physical therapy, and have mentioned before that I’m trying to do piriformis stretches pretty regularly.  After four months of being heavily committed to the stretching routine, I had started to get some substantial relief from the pirformis syndrome.  Then, of course, I slacked off.  Now I can feel my lower back and hip starting to tighten back up again.  The physical therapist had indicated there was also some instability in my right hip that was allowing it to alternate between tilting forward and backward.  It seems that I’ve gotten the worst of that straightened out, but the long-term piriformis relief is proving difficult to achieve.  I’m starting to believe that I’ll be doing these exercises for at least the next 12 months.  Maybe longer.

My Dead MP3 Player

In other news, my .mp3 player died on me.  What a disappointment.  My wife asked for an ipod shuffle for Christmas two years ago, which Santa Claus gladly brought.  Quite frankly, I hadn’t been too interested in the things.  I enjoy my quiet time while I run, and honestly, most of the “pop” music these days bores me.  That being said, we found one this past Christmas, and I got it for Christmas.  (I think it was an after-Thanksgiving Day doorbuster.)  I started getting into podcasts, which I’ve discovered I enjoy.  So, just when I really started like toting the thing around, it died on me.  Anyone have a good suggestion for a replacement?

On that front, how do you think the auto “Sync” Windows Media Player function compares against iTunes for keeping your player and library synchronized?  I consider myself fairly technically savvy, but that auto sync windows media function just seems to be clunky and – well, useless.  Am I missing something here?