Originally Posted by Doug64

My guess is that you have the LS Blue Ridge Touring, hence the Mavic 719 rims. The Mavic 719 rim is a heavy duty rim used a lot on touring bikes. Also the narrowest tire you can use on the 719 rims is 28 mm, a relatively wide, heavy tire for a "road" bike. It will have rack and fender bosses on the dropouts, and a front fender boss on the middle of the fork blade.

I did not use the 719 rims when I was building up our touring bikes because of their weight. They weigh 565 gr. vs 460 for Velocity Dyad rims. The Dyad rims are considered heavy duty.

The basic Litespeed Blue Ridge Touring bike weighs about 22 lbs. without any add-ons, like seat bag, pump, water bottle cages etc. That is very light for a touring bike with most weighing in at 25-28 lbs. However, it is pretty heavy compared to most road bikes. It is almost 5 lbs heavier than my road bike.

A light weight wheelstset will help some. It could get you down to 20 lbs. However, getting titanium skewers, removing the valve stem nut, and the dust caps from your crank and expecting to see a difference in speed is like trying to make a Toyota Corolla perform like a Porsche by putting a spoiler on the Toyota's trunk lid.