Legendary with energy is ruining my Duolingo life

I try not to complain about updates. Every company trying to improve is going to have hits and misses. Overall, I love Duolingo. That being said, I have never liked anything about the update to energy - since that started, I generally only do two lessons a day, one in the morning and the other in the evening so my learning has definitely slowed. But where I really hit a brick wall is when I try to get legendary on the practice weak skills lessons. Sometimes it takes me DAYS to get past them. Then, my learning basically completely stops until I get past it. It's infuriating!

I am a free Duolingo user. I'd love to pay for it if there was an option to pay once, but I don't do subscriptions. I know I could just not do legendary, but my personality won't let me - it feels like cheating.