Injury (possibly Piriformis Syndrome)

I havent really been injured much since I seriously started exercising about 6-7 years ago.

I had some shin splints early on due to several year old shoes. That all stopped when I got properly fitted for a pair of good running shoes and has never come back because I buy new running shoes every 3 months just as a preemptive measure.

I have had a little bit of tendonitis when training for a marathon. That was quickly solved by icing 3-4 times a day for a few days and just keeping to shorter runs. Didn’t really get that bad.

I had my injury from the bike crash with torn ligaments in the ribs on my back and the big cut in my finger that prevented me from both running and swimming for a while.

Now hoever, I’ve been hit with something a bit more serious it seems. The good part right now is that I am not really training for anything in particular, I’m just training for the fun of it, so no stress to take some time off.

I have had a pretty bad pain in my left gluteus muscle. After some research it seems like it is most likely the sciatic nerve that is causing my pain. The worst position I can be in is basically driving a car. More research seems to point to whats called Piriformis Syndrome. This is when muscles basically pinch the sciatic nerve and could be caused by a lot of running and biking and other forward motion exercise.

I dont really have a problem with running and biking. It actually doesn’t really hurt when I am exercising but according to all research it’s supposedly makes it worse. So from this I have basically be reseting as much as possible. With the exception of some swimming that is not really supposed to aggravate it.

I have done a bunch of stretching that is supposed to help. Stretched a lot last night and then woke up in the middle of the night with a lot of pain. That hasn’t really happen so my immediate thought was that it had gotten much worse. Got up and popped some ibuprofen.

Today when I woke up most of the pain was gone and today has been the best day in probably 2 weeks.  Not sure why but i welcome it. I have a shot (but hilly) bike race on Sunday so we’ll see how that goes. Outside of that I plan to take it easy and when I am fully healed I’ll hit the gym to strengthen muscles to prevent this form happening in the future.

Anyways, happy that I seem to be healing from this pretty fast. Some reading I’ve done suggests that I could be very persistent and some have had it for years.