As a proud new owner of a 7300 myself, I'd say if I were really worried about weight I'd replace the suspension fork with a rigid fork (which will happen anyway when this fork wears out as I'm simply not a fan of suspension forks) and replace the saddle and suspension seatpost with lighter weight components.

That said, this bike is probably lighter than my old steel Schwinn road bike was and I rode that thing all over the place!

However, I'm not that worried about weight, myself. I'm not in terrible shape, but even so I could easily stand to lose 30 pounds. So, I won't worry about saving five or ten pounds on the bike until I've lost thirty pounds on the bod!

As someone has said, weight doesn't much matter on the flat, while rolling resistance matters everywhere. I'd add to that gearing. On the flat the road bikes will leave us eating dust because we don't have the high gears to keep up even if our bikes were lighter. On long, extended grades we'll probably make up the difference on them because we don't have to pull those hills in steep road gears. We can shift down to granny and just putter along barely breaking a sweat even if our bikes do weigh more

I plan to ride a couple of centuries this summer. I'll be quite content to "sweep the leaves" on my 7300 while the young bucks ride on ahead

John