Modified Race to River Preride

Today was finally able to complete a full preride of the upcoming race to river course. This was my third attempt and both previous times I got flats on either front or rear and wasnt able to complete the full course. Ive had a rough time lately with tubes and before either of the first two attempts with flats I went thru another set when I went to head out one saturday and found my rear tire had been shreading knobs down to the white threads and was forced to get a new tire and went back to a 2.2 on the front and just rotated the 2.0 to the rear. Then after this weekends trip to Tsali I went thru another 2 tubes and was forced to hike a bike for a mile or so to get back to the campsite. That was the final straw so now I'm running the stans juice with rim strips. What a major pain that first tire was to get going until I figured out the best combination needed to build my rim up in the center. After trying combinations of the recomended 3/16ths weatherstrip, felt, two runs of velox the trick that seemed to be the best balance and still be able to seat the bead was just one strip of 10mm velox under the rim strip. This was my first ride since the ordeal but tires held up fine and did seem to have a confident conforming feel to them.
Ran into Jason on lap two up by the Gazeebo and was good to see him again. We were talking and it seems like its been months since we rode together and was good to ride again. I guess riding with Jason again I had to rekindle the bushwacker name and I ended up cliping a small tree that sent me for a spin and down hard on my already sore left knee. Was fine right after the incident but as the miles tacked on it started hurting whenever I put to much pressure on it and for the climbs there at the end I could only work on keeping it spinning and didnt try to hammer anything.
Good ride and good company for awhile anyway, still not sure about the distance of this thing though, I ended up logging 26.65 and the only extra I thought I did was starting the ride from the front lot instead of Gazeebo? The race (sport class) shows its only supposed to be 4 laps of 5 miles each so go figure.