B&M tourney strategy

[Aicirt]

I have some questions about the optimal strategy for a tournament at my local B&M, Prairie Meadows in Altoona, IA. The tournament is $25+$5 and has 11 tables of 10. They also have a waiting list and whenever someone is eliminated in the first round (20 mins) then someone can enter the tournament. Id guess that 125 players play in the tournament on average. Top 10 places are paid with 10th getting about their $30 back and first place winning roughly $1000.

You start with t1500 and blinds start at 25/50. Each round is 20 mins long. Id say on average 15-18 hands are played in a round.

Im not sure on the exact blind amounts, but its something like this:

25/50
50/100
150/300
200/400
300/600
400/800
500/1000
1000/2000
1500/3000

I just played in the tournament once and I remembered that I felt good until the blinds went from 200/400 to 300/600. The average stack size is very small comared to the blinds. My buddy made the final three tables and I checked the average stack size and it was roughly 5500 and I think the blinds were 400/800 or 500/1000 at the time.

The average player in this tournament is quite honestly awful and just let their stacks get blinded away. Most of the players will call most any bet with any two paint cards. The hand I busted on someone limped with QTo UTG and I pushed with a small Ace and he had an easy call given my stack size. Lots of players were limping with these types of hands.

So what should my optimal strategy be? Seems like 10 BBs is too late to start pushing preflop in order to keep ahead of the blinds.

What do you do in a tournament with this structure?