Looks like the recommendation from the most of people I asked is to skip the very first labs and jump on 26-35 (the version 4),however, still the very first labs are great in terms of building strong knowledge on things like redistribution,route filtering and troubleshooting. I am about to finish lab 7 and jump to lab 26.
Sometimes you just need a good distraction, and I randomly got the urge to study for an exam; something I haven't done in years. I decided to look into network security and started watching some CompTIA training videos, and...it was all a bit too familiar. Apparently the search continues.