Issues with Hand Pain - not sure what to do?!?

[blueeyesaz]

your hands shouldn't hurt. your hands aren't designed for weight bearing, so 'toughening them up' is not possible.
One thing you can do is move your hands around A LOT. make sure you are not locking your elbows. Make sure you are not leaning on your hands.
Are you doing core exercises? That's what is holding your body up so your hands don't have to do it.
Now, do you have the shallow handlebars? shorter shifters?
do you know what you are doing that hurts (like applying the brakes, maybe?)
I don't think getting a smaller saddle is going to improve your hand problem.

I have caught myself locking my elbows on occasion but I'm trying to make sure I'm not doing that when riding, it's never for more than a moment or two. I am doing core exercises and I play tennis A LOT, hopefully that will get better with time? I do have the shallow handlebars and the shifters are shorter as they are designed for smaller hands being the wsd. Braking and shifting doesn't hurt as I'm just extending my fingers when doing that, it's mostly just when riding, when I'm "resting" my hands on the handlebars.

What throws me off so much on trying to figure out the cause though is that I have had a couple of 25-30 mile rides where my hands haven't significantly bothered me, but for instance the other day I went out and not 10 minutes into my ride my hands were hurting so bad I had to cut it short and head home.