Originally Posted by
BlazingPedals
A 3-wheeler is going to take a speed hit; the only question being how much. Only a small hit for some trikes, large for others. If you're looking for speed capability, look at the same factors that determine speediness in a road bike: weight, frame stiffness, and overall aerodynamics.
With trikes, a quick thing to look at is the gearing. If it has a small drive wheel and doesn't normalize the gearing, that's telling you it doesn't need gears over 85 inches -- because it's slow. IOW, low gears don't make it slow, they simply verify that it's already slow.
Regarding recumbent bikes, just like with upright bikes performance is all over the spectrum. Most are no faster than a typical hybrid, but some are just stupid-fast. Again, look at weight, stiffness and aerodynamics.
Thank you very much. that is what I was thinking, but I don't know enough about them. do they use shimano/SRAM cassetts/cranks, etc like road bikes? if no, can you put those types of components on a recumbent? I would think you could and it would be standard for that equipment, but again, I just don't know.