Speed and direction are entirely up to you, the AC compressor just kicks in when its needed, neither of these two limit that, its having the AC light on that counts.
For re-circ - press and hold the recirc button (the one with two lights on it in the centre) until they flash twice. It is now set to auto-recirc and will enable re-circ when it thinks it needs to. If you override it, you will need to do press and hold again to get it back into auto.