Keep at it Darby, It will run well. The distributor mod is a must, 15-18 initial 34/35 total should be in the ball park. With the availabe replacement pistons, I think your compression will be closer to 9-91/2:1
allthough I have Aluminum heads, I used a thinner head gasket to get compression at 10:1 the block was also deck quite a bit. I have often used the 87 octane to top off the tank after racing and street drive my junk with no ping. The only time I got pinging was before limiting advance.
Good luck, see you this weekend??