You don't need a foam roller you need a tennis ball! Lie down, bend your left leg, put your right foot up just in front of your left knee (so your right knee is sticking out to the side). Put a tennis ball under your right buttock, move slightly until you feel where it hurts - now stay there for a while, then roll it a bit, find another sore spot, repeat. You can Google to find the good stretches for piriformis syndrome.
Re. marathon, I don't know how much it affected my time; probably not a lot. Basically my taper was slightly longer and rather more extreme than intended - the physio let me do a short run the Wednesday before the race but otherwise (except for a very painful three mile hobble before I went to the physio) no running for three weeks.. It was my first marathon and I was aiming for under 3.45. However, this was Greater Manchester Marathon - very cold (5 C before windchill), raining and hailing, and we were running into a gale for the second half, with legs seriously stiffening in the cold, so I wasn't too disapointed with my time of 3.47.