I actually rather enjoyed commuting on this:
It was a basic Hardrock Sport that I put 26x1.5 Armadillos on. It changed it from being a rather bit of a beast to being a bit of a rocket ship. I basically kept it in the big ring constantly after I put those tires on and certainly wasn't slow. It was slow when the Nokians were on it, terminally slow actually.
It's problem was that shortly after I got this, and well, it's brilliant:
Ironically that bike looks almost nothing like that now. Add a rack, Nitto Noodles, a Deore crankset, clipless pedals, Marathon Duremes in spring summer or Marathon Winters now and you get an idea. My problem was that before I got the LHT I had no idea that the Hardrock was small for me. I tried a lot to get it to fit better, but in the end I sold it because it was clear it was too small.
I still regret it a bit because as "hop on and bomb" bike it was
awesome. I've had my LHT as my only bike for almost five years now and I'm considering a Ogre as a second bike. I miss the whole "hop on it and bomb around"-ness of the Hardrock. Granted when I put a 700x45 Innova studded tire on the front of the LHT recently that started to happen again.