Improving pedaling technique

Some excellent suggestions here - one-legged pedalling is particularly good at showing you where in the cycle you might want to apply pressure, and a great exercise in itself.

As far as the 'pull-up' is concerned - I wouldn't quite think of it on quite those terms. The usual advice i've seen is along the lines of

* coming up to the top of the stroke, try and kick/push your foot forward in your shoe over the top to accelerate it over the top
* push down (much as you already do) from roughly 2 o'clock to 5 o'clock-ish
* pull back with your foot (towards the rear of your shoe) as you approach and go through the bottom of the cycle
* relax and unload the foot as you come back round again

..so it's something like

kick - push - pull - relax

It takes time to get used to things, I still don't have a great or even good action, but you can begin to feel some differences almost immediately (particularly with the drag). You can try adding in bits of that, one side at a time but whilst clipped into both sides, when out and about - it'll get more natural over time and you'll stop actively thinking about the details so much.

As always, there's plenty of stuff online (too much sometimes) - bike-fit guru Steve Hogg is always a good person to listen to (IMO) and has some interesting stuff about pedalling here

http://www.stevehoggbikefitting.com/bikefit/2011/05/pedalling-technique-...

Whatever happens, I guess it's not the end of the world if the technique isn't someones idea of perfect as long as you're having fun. Good luck with whatever you do.

+1 for Alex's suggestion of riding on rollers - you can really feel it when you're not pedalling smoothly on them. The other thing that I've found really helped is riding a fixed gear, as going down hills your top speed is restricted by the rate at which you can spin the pedals.

on a flat section of road unclip one foot and try pedalling one legged. After a couple of minutes try this with the other leg.
This will improve your action. You could also try riding on rollers as a smooth pedalling action is essential!

According to Grant Petersen in his excellent book "Just Ride", nobody actually 'pedals in circles'.

"This has been proven by laboratory studies of top-notch riders hooked up to machines, with wires taped to various muscles to see which ones are firing at which part of the stroke. These studies prove that at normal pedalling cadences *nobody* pulls up on the pedals. Even pro mash. The most efficient pedalers just minimise the weight on the upward-moving pedal, so that one leg isn't fighting the other"

I wouldn't worry. The people with a really fluid style don't look like they are thinking about what their feet are doing at 100rpm.

Just try to pedal smoothly (i.e. pedalling circles). Unless you are going up steep hills or pushing at a lowish cadence most people don't pull up much.

Most beginners stomp on the pedals because they are cycling at low cadences and fighting the bike. Pedalling with a higher cadence will soon encourage a smoother pedalling style.

(Apolgies, I re-read your original post and yoo made clear that you weren't a beginner!)

80/20 sounds fine to me. I would have thought you'll just injure yourself trying to pull up as much as you push down.

Two quotes that helped me improve were these:
Lemond said that the upstroke is like pushing your knee toward the bars and Eddy Merckx suggested to think of scraping the mud off the bottom of your foot. [Citations needed.]
Your leg is already so conditioned to do the down stroke, that there is no mental image necessary.