FWIW, All of my bikes are bottom pull, but I can give you some advice on FD and shifter issues. Since you indicated that you are intending to run barcons, you can run the front in friction mode with either a road or mtb FD. If you use indexed mode, you have to use a road FD.

I've set up the ever popular Tiagra and 105 triple FDs to work with chainrings as small as 44. They both work great with a touring crank (48 or 46 on the big ring). The trick is to set the FD with as small a clearance as you can between the deraileur and the big ring. (1 mm about right). The tighter you get it, the better it will shift. You may have some problems with it taking a bit to shift up from the granny gear to the middle ring, but a little tuning will get you an acceptable level of performance.

I know that my Volpe is a bottom pull FD, but I can't imagine that top vs bottom pull could make any difference to the performance.

Good luck, it will work, adjust it carefully and by the book and you'll be good.

Steve