The purpose of this work is to construct a simple, efficient and accurate well-balanced numerical scheme for one-dimensional (1D) blood flow in large arteries with varying geometrical and mechanical properties. As the steady states at rest are not relevant for blood flow, we construct two well-balanced hydrostatic reconstruction techniques designed to preserve low-Shapiro number steady states that may occur in large network simulations. The Shapiro number S h = u/c is the equivalent of the Froude number for shallow water equations and the Mach number for compressible Euler equations. The first is the low-Shapiro hydrostatic reconstruction (HR-LS), which is a simple and efficient method, inspired from the hydrostatic reconstruction technique (HR). The second is the subsonic hydrostatic reconstruction (HR-S), adapted here to blood flow and designed to exactly preserve all subcritical steady states. We systematically compare HR, HR-LS and HR-S in a series of single artery and arterial network numerical tests designed to evaluate their well-balanced and wave-capturing properties. The results indicate that HR is not adapted to compute blood flow in large arteries as it is unable to capture wave reflections and transmissions when large variations of the arteries' geometrical and mechanical properties are considered. On the contrary, HR-S is exactly well-balanced and is the most accurate hydrostatic reconstruction technique. However, HR-LS is able to compute low-Shapiro number steady states as well as wave reflections and transmissions with satisfying accuracy and is simpler and computationally less expensive than HR-S. We therefore recommend using HR-LS for 1D blood flow simulations in large arterial network simulations.