Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

No, just play it any way you want to.
Low flying aircraft ? Hard to compete with. A few days ago there were a thunder and lightening over here and I thought - how can any audio system reproduce that ? Or record, for that matter. Crazy audiophile thoughts indeed.

IMO all audio equipment etc need a break-in (burn-in) period of time.

Your new running shoes will need more "burn" - oops! "break-in" than any speaker wire! 

My experience with the "break/burn In" is mostly yes it does make a difference. The Magnepan speakers took about 2-3 months before they came alive. I have a recently rebuilt before purchasing, Carver M500t amp that took quite a while to acquire that Class A musical kinda tubey sound. My 1 year old ART9 cartridge is still breaking in after about 350 hours of use and now sounds marvelous. 

Not sure how many of the time-line markers in the link below are data driven, one guy’s O-pinion or from wider-based experience. I too think speaker cables, actually all audio wire (even power cords - a surprise to me) and components undergo "burn in". Whether you are happy with the sound "post-burn in" is a different issue. Even if your AQ cable was used, sonic changes might still occur during a "settling in" period. How much any of this is purely physical and objective vs psycho-acoustic and subjective seems moot to me. The experience remains.

https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/breaking-in-cables-and-components/