I finished reading the Flying Scotsman fairly recently. It's the biography of Scotsman Graeme Obree, the former World Hour Record holder and it's a book that I recommend all pro cycling fanatics should read, not least because it shatters the 'glamorous' myth of pro cycling that the Armstrong-type books perpetuate.
Flying Scotsman is not about winning prestigious races and preparing for a single high-profile event year after year. It's about living on or just under the bread line, training in the worst possible conditions (is there a worse place in the world than Scotland to be an aspiring cyclist, I wonder?), and learning to deal with a temperament and psychological disposition that induces wild oscillations between euphoria and suicide. If you have the chance, read it. You won't regret it.

Didn't seem like Obree swung over to the euphoria side of the spectrum much either.

Scotland isn't the greatest best there are certainly worse - like Columbia where if you are successful you can look forward to being kidnapped and held for ransom, though that seems to have tapered off the last few years.

In a Bicisport interview they said Jose Rujano had an army escort when training on some roads in Venezuela too.

Yip, perhaps 'optimism' would have been a better adjective to use. Still, the book is pretty insightful when it comes to his mental disposition.
Columbia might be full of gun-toting would-be ‘abductors’, but at least it gets more than a few days’ sun each year. The same cannot be said for Scotland, which can best be described as a place you do not want to visit in the winter if you suffer from SAD...

They started making a movie about him years ago that was supposed to star Sean Connery as his trainer, but they had financial problems so it isn't coming out till next year (without Sean Connery I guess) although I think they may have screened it already in the UK.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472268/