ORMLite's createOrUpdate seems slow - what is normal speed?

Calling the ORMLite RuntimeExceptionDao's createOrUpdate(...) method in my app is very slow.

I have a very simple object (Item) with a 2 ints (one is the generatedId), a String and a double. I test the time it takes (roughly) to update the object in the database (a 100 times) with the code below. The log statement logs:

time to update 1 row 100 times: 3069

Why does it take 3 seconds to update an object 100 times, in a table with only 1 row. Is this the normal ORMLite speed? If not, what might be the problem?

RuntimeExceptionDao<Item, Integer> dao =
    DatabaseManager.getInstance().getHelper().getReadingStateDao();
Item item = new Item();
long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
    item.setViewMode(i);
    dao.createOrUpdate(item);
}
long update = System.currentTimeMillis();
Log.v(TAG, "time to update 1 row 100 times: " + (update - start));

If I create 100 new rows then the speed is even slower.

Note: I am already using ormlite_config.txt. It logs "Loaded configuration for class ...Item" so this is not the problem.

Thanks.