Thanks all. Soreness might not be the right term then. More likely, I have a habit of tightly gripping the ends. Without tape, hands on bare metal feels less than comfortable after a while. To be honest, that's an impression very quickly formed, because 99.9% of the time I wear gloves. In any case, I've made the decision to ditch the gloves and go for some bar wrap.

About this blister tolerance thing. I'm all for the idea of sockless, but with my first tri only two weeks away, is that too close to experiment now? I would hate to train sockless this week, and go into race week with brand new blisters.