Auctions used to be extended if a bid was made too close to the ending time. The issue was that it extended time by an hour I think and could be extended indefinitely. I think cryptic removed it because auctions were taking too long. It's pretty stupid since they could have just reduced the extension duration to 5 mins…
That has happened to me as well. I'm assuming it's some kind of bug where the displayed time does not match exactly with the actual time of the auction.
It's perfectly doable. I learned that it hits hard after the first time I died. The second time I was lazy and tried to block it instead of moving. Third time got it. I don't know if you're just bashing your head against it or something.