Decisive Month or Will I have a Tri Season this year

I'm in about the same position and was last year too.  I wear Hokas as well because I have back and hip issues as a result of past injuries. Given how cushy they are, however, ankle strength or

In addition to very gradually ramping up my SBR, I also use my foam roller regularly, work on ankle and hip/glute stability, and do dynamic stretches every day regardless of what activity I'm doing.  Increasing hip stability will help with knees by putting stability at both ends of your legs, which helps your knees from wobbling around so much.  I'm also working on general core strength because that will also help stabilize things.

I'm doing PT for my knee because started getting a lot of pain in Dec. when I was training for a HM and had to stop running completely.  My PT gave me the following exercises to do every day and I can already tell a difference in my hip/glute strength after just a few days:

• single leg front toe tap 5x/leg
• single leg front heel/back toe 5x/leg
• leg swing fwd and back 5x/leg
• fwd lunge w/knee dip 10x
• bkwd lunge w/knee dip 10x

Lunge step doesn't need to be big; just a little larger than a regular walking step.  The knee dips don't need to be down to the floor; just halfway down is fine.  As you increase in strength, you can dip deeper with your knee.  With the leg swing, as you increase in flexibility, you can start to flick your knee up toward your rear.  Another exercise you can do is to do squats on a platform that's about 1.5" at the top sloping down to the floor.  They're much easier because you don't have ankle impingement limiting the depth of your squat.  You still get the same benefits from it.

One last thing that I do, which really helps with both quad strength and cardio, is to do some stairs every day.  My office is on the 14th floor of our building, which makes them really convenient.  By the end of the summer last year, I was up to 13 flights 2x/day.  I started over again this season at 4 flights a couple weeks ago and am gradually increasing.  I stopped doing that after tri season last year when I ramped up my running and I think that might have contributed to my knee injury.  Maybe or maybe not, but I'm planning on not giving that up this year!  If you don't have easy access to that many stairs, you can always do a single-step workout and just gradually increase the amount of time you do it.  One flight is about 15-20 steps if you want to gauge it that way.

Hope that helps somewhat.  Good luck!!

Forgot to give full explanation of the toe tap and toe/heel tap.  In between taps, lift your foot to your knee.  So it would be toe tap, lift foot to knee, toe tap, lift foot, etc., or heel tap/foot to knee/toe tap/heel to knee, etc.  Sorry.

It still feels like tap exercises.  Makes me kind of want to put my hand on my hip and add in a little hip swing flair to make it more sassy!