Ironically, my last two flats were massive freaking staples on the shoulder and one of them took out a tubeless tire. Personally, I think the ride quality of tubeless no longer outweighs the tradeoff in maintenance. That's just me, though.

I don't know why. I'm not a light guy. I've been anywhere from about 210-230+ over the past few years and I run fairly low pressures and rarely get flats.

I think I would expect at least 2K miles from the continentals, more if you "rotate" the front to the back and put a new one on the front. Man, I really hope I didn't open a can of worms on that debate there...