Hello! Intro and a training question

Hello all,

I am new to the site and trying to dig through the various articles.  I have run 6 marathons over the last 5 years or so (a baby threw my training off!).  While I've never done a real tri, I have done some "test tris" where I swam 1.5-ish miles, 30ish bike miles, and 12-ish miles.  I have a "just want to finish" goal of a full IM. I'm a little lumpier than I need to be for the full IM... but we'll work on that (6'1" 240lbs). 

My last marathon was November 5.  I took most of that month easy, and since December I've been working to get my swim technique up and build some leg strength for biking.  I've done a test run of the swim and in a pool, at a casual aerobic pace, I can do 3800 meters around 100 minutes.  Not great, but if I was a little less lumpy I think it would be quicker

My biking is awful - I'm a complete noob.  I have a decent tri-bike that I've played with some, but I need to spend some time getting up-to-speed.  For the last 3 months, I've been doing hard indoor stationary biking to get some leg strength.  In the next week or so, I'm going to try a test 40 mile run on a real bike to get a baseline. 

I am targeting Louisville, which puts me 26 weeks out starting Monday 2/27.  I'm planning on following the beginner IM plan on this site:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=441

I did have a couple quick questions:

1.  There are no explicit run/bike bricks that I've seen.  Is it assumed I will work them in (or discouraged)?  My understanding was that bricks were important?

2.  Is there another general "how to read the plan" article that I'm not finding?  I'm able to figure out most of the abbreviations/etc, but there are a couple things still unclear (like when to brick).

Thanks all, I look forward to learning a lot from all of you!

Shawn