SQL 7 and Outlook

I have had a SQL procedure running weekly for more than 4 months. It sends a report to users via Outlook and just recently has been taking an excessive amount of time to run. I have taken the procedure and pared it down to the following, and have no idea why this takes nearly a minute to complete???

EXEC xp_sendmail ‘accounting’,
@subject = ‘Inventory and Delivery Record’,
@message = ‘Inventory and Delivery Record!’

Thanks.