Jeff, what kind of elevation change do you have in your hill route? I have to say, the 60 mile day a few weeks ago was rather unkind to the junk.
Yeah..... I hate riding the flats. Very hard on all the contact points. I need to be able to get up off the saddle a bunch or, as you say, bad things happen.
Strava says ~2400 feet of elevation gain in the 27 mile route. It's a there-and-back; the profile looks like this: