If you think about it, there's a lot to do and time is money. It's not just starting the thing and letting it run. Setup is critical as well as monitoring it running during the first few minutes.
You can't really think about it like that either, just plunking down a couple hundred bucks out of the blue, it should be factored in to the overall budget. It's a pretty small percentage in contrast to the larger cost of building a performance engine. It's basically like insurance for your larger investment.
When I was a tech we'd never really break engines in but they were all modern and computer controlled so there was little worry about things like wiping out a FT cam. It was always a little tense at first fire though, making sure everything was good and there were no leaks or unusual noises. Bleeding the cooling system was always a hassle too.
