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 I'd guess most of that time is for establishing the Tor circuit. Are subsequent operations faster? 
 It could be. Lots of research needed on this.  
 Yes it take some time to build a circuit but hidden services will always be slower even afterwards since there are not only your hops but also the hidden services ones. 
 If everyone would be running a hidden service on device for there relay, i2p would be superior to tor in this use case.