IF I had another go, I'd definitely go the full on Team Sky route if I could. I am sure that Tommy Godwin would have done too.
Cost?
Kurt spent about a dollar per mile. He paid for everything himself. All his equipment. But he had one volunteer AFAIK, not paid staff.
I don't know if Kurt had the motorhome before he started.
So even from that, with paid staff etc, we're looking at hundreds, not tens of thousands of pounds even for a pretty basic set up.
Before I stopped we talked about on the road support. It would have made a difference. But fundamentally my downfall was down to both bad luck and not starting with enough fitness. We agreed that if I had road support that I'd probably get my distance up to 205 a day, but I still wouldn't do much more because I needed so much recovery to gain the speed to do more within the time we had.
Take away the bad luck, we reckon I had a fair chance of clinching the record, but not by much.
I'm cool with people talking about my having another go. Nobody is pointing a gun at my head and forcing me. I see it as people down the pub planning the hypothetical perfect murder or bank job.
There is an ultra racer who uses paid staff. I have met him. I hear he has a pretty fast staff turnover because crewing for an ultra racer is a tough job, though I do hear that he pays well. Expect screaming, shouting and abuse from your rider in extreme events, it does happen.
The fellow who uses paid staff is a multi millionaire who has his own business selling aircraft to the very rich. He loaned a bike to Hoppo in the Race Around Ireland. Just one of his spares he had knocking around. I reckon it was worth about £20,000.(and I set it up for Hoppo in about 5 minutes flat!)
All the other racers have volunteers instead of paid staff. It's not unheard of for crews to abandon their riders because they can't hack it.
It's an often said phrase that, "your crew can't win your race for you but they sure can lose it for you."
Your crew can also gain you penalties.
In theory, I should have had a follow car at all times. That was one of the reasons behind the spot tracker. The UMCA do understand how extremely difficult it would be to have a full time road crew for a whole year.
They also reccommend 6 hour stints on "direct follow" (where the rider has the follow car directly behibd them at all times) There are also a lot of rules to comply with, especially on direct follow.
It's really not as simple as it may seem, but still possible.