It's great. I put drop bars on mine, so it was more like a roadie. It was my main training bike for about a year and a half. It allowed me to save my 17lb carbon Fuji for "race-days" only. I can honestly say that there was no real difference between the SmoothHound and a regular road bike of the same weight.

This picture shows the bike with 56/42 rings up front and 12-27 cassette. I eventually replaced it with a Capreo rear hub with 9-26t to get higher top-end gearing for those fast rides.