I'm with MichaelW on this one. Not much chance of it being your bottom bracket.

If it is your freewheel, it won't be long before it completely cashes on you. If your mountings are some lightweight alloy, this could be a possibility. If your freewheel and hub mountings are steel, it is strange that you would be wearing them out.

This may sound crazy, but is there any possibility that you spun out which gave you the one-inch soft pedal sensation? This happened to me this past winter. I thought something mechanical was giving in, but I found out I was spinning out a bit on icy patches.