As we are on the topic...
I had a recumbent in front of me for a few miles at LWL.
What I noticed is that the rider did seem to put a lot of effort to keep the damn thing going straight, with not much success as he was weaving all over the road. Looking at his arms, they were anything but relaxed, there was clearly a lot of effort going on.
I am assuming he was an experienced rider, or he wouldn't embark in a 400 km audax on a recumbent... there was no wind.
Can anyone comment?
It's all about the bike, apart from a small part that's about rider confidence. Also, don't fall into the trap of assuming that 'recumbent' is a functional class of bicycle (like 'road bike' 'mountain bike' 'city bike' or whatever) - there's more variation between different types of recumbent than there is between different types of diamond-framed bicycle.
You've probably seen upright bike riders wobbling around and fighting with the bars, and you've probably seen upright bike riders gliding along effortlessly, it's the same with recumbents. It's because different bikes that are optimised for different purposes have different steering geometry, which affects the handling. A bike designed for confident high-speed cornering will tend to be twitchy at low speed. A bike designed for hauling a camping load will be admirably stable, but a bit reluctant at cornering. Get some random combination of factors interacting in a certain way, and you can get steering shimmy at certain speed. And a rider who's unfamiliar with the bike (or falling asleep or extremely distracted) is liable to wobble, regardless of what they're riding.
I have a recumbent bike that I can (literally, for a few seconds - DAHIKT) ride in my sleep and balance at speeds my bike computer can't properly register, and another one that at low speed requires you to either concentrate intently on balance, or embrace a zen-like state where the bike and your muscle memory get on with it - but if you suddenly start to think about how you're balancing the bike, it's liable to wobble alarmingly. (On the other hand, the latter is much better behaved at high speed.) One's a touring bike, and the other's a racing bike.
The main difference with recumbents generally is that many have the centre of mass much lower to the ground than uprights. That means it's a shorter inverted pendulum to balance, so tends to involve higher frequency steering corrections (contrast with tallbikes and ordinaries, where the frequency is lower). Also, tiller steering in particular tends to visually amplify small steering corrections. Small changes that you'd barely notice on drop handlebars or under-seat steering look much bigger, simply because the business end of the handlebars moves further in order to make them. Looks clunky, but it keeps the rider's arms in, which reduces drag, and makes for a neater package.
There's a technique thing, as well, in that (exotic geometries where you can steer with your feet aside) all steering input is via the handlebars. Unless the seat's very upright, you can't move your body-weight around to make small corrections like you can on a DF bike. It's only a problem if you try to ride slowly at too low a cadence, but it severely reduces the ability to ride no-handed. I can just about do it on the Streetmachine, but the bike will pick a random direction to go in as there's no way to correct it.
Further note on wobbling: Sometimes I'll do something that causes a wobble deliberately. My mirrors are mounted on the handlebars, and a brief wobble allows me to pan them around, eg. to check for cyclists in my blind spot. Sometimes little things like reaching over to shoo flies from certain parts of your body is liable to cause wobble, too - I find it surprisingly difficult to reach my opposite elbow while keeping under-seat steering on track, for example. And since a recumbent rider can't take their body off the seat to absorb a bump with their legs, those who aren't equipped with wide tyres and rear suspension (which is fairly common on touring recumbents, for exactly this reason) are liable to be quite pothole-averse to prevent excessive rattling of their
BRANEZ. With a really laid-back racing geometry your view of the road immediately in front of your bike is compromised, which exacerbates this issue - if in doubt, you dodge it.
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