FTP Endurance Fuel — Built by an Endurance Athlete
It started with being sick at the side of the Berlin Marathon
Berlin, September 2024. I went through halfway in 1 hour 31 — exactly on pace for the sub-3 I'd spent months training for.
My heart rate was through the roof and I knew something wasn't right. I took a gel and a drink mix from an aid station, got the thick mess down, and ran on. A kilometre later I stopped and was violently sick at the side of the course.
I'd taken on too much gel, none of it was digesting, and my body had stopped keeping water down. I was ghostly white and clammy, and every step from there took an enormous effort. I stopped twice more. I nearly quit.
I walked the last two kilometres up the Berlin straight towards the Brandenburg Gate, because running made me sick again. The only reason I got there was knowing my family were waiting at the line.
First half: 1:31. Second half: 2 hours.
A white bag in my kitchen cupboard
I'm a chartered engineer by trade, and engineers have a particular problem — we see something that's broken and we can't leave it alone. What broke in Berlin wasn't my legs. It was my fuelling.
So I went home and started making my own.
Chews instead of gels — something you can actually chew at hour four rather than force down. A drink mix that wasn't thick and heavy. No packaging, no label, no company. Just a white pouch with FTP drawn on the front in marker pen. Electro-carb, number one.
On that bag, I qualified for the GB age-group team for the European Championships. Duathlon, as it turns out — I'm a triathlete, but I'll take it.
That was the moment it stopped being a personal fix. If it worked for me, it might work for other people. I looked at what was on the market and couldn't find anything that beat it on taste, texture, price and reusability — or that dealt with the pile of plastic wrappers every long session produces.
So I built it.
Energy chews vs gels — what actually changes →
What FTP means
Functional threshold power — the cycling benchmark. Mine's 320 watts.
It nearly wasn't called that. The first packaging design was KOM Ride Fuel, for king of the mountains, until a trademark search suggested otherwise. The packaging still nods to that polka-dot jersey.
These days I prefer what else it stands for: Fuel. Train. Perform.
Where I started
In 2022 I weighed over 100kg and had never run 10K.
That year my then-wife and I lost a pregnancy. I couldn't fix it and I couldn't sit still with it either, so I signed up for the London Marathon and ran it for the Miscarriage Association. I ran every day for nearly a year, dropped 25kg — about four stone — finished London in 2023 in 3:30, my first marathon, and raised £3,000 along the way.
Then I kept going. Cycling, then swimming, then everything else.
Since then: a 1:24 half marathon, 17:30 for 5K, a sub-5-hour 70.3, and GB age-group qualification for the European Championships. I'm not a professional and I never will be. I've got a job, a young family, and the same 24 hours as everyone else.
That's exactly who FTP is built for. Not elites — the person doing their long run at six in the morning because it's the only gap in the day. First-time marathoners, age-groupers, cyclists and triathletes fitting training around real life.
How it's made, and who makes it
I incorporated FTP Endurance Fuel in July 2025 and started trading that August, from my kitchen table. In its first year it grew to around £300,000.
I still run the product, the marketing and the strategy myself. My mum runs fulfilment from our own fulfilment centre, with a small team she's trained. It's a family business in the most literal sense.
In 2026 our Energy Pastilles won the Runner's World Sports Nutrition Award, recognised for performance, flavour and packaging design. Nobody told us — I found out googling our own name at the kitchen table, and sat there in complete disbelief looking at packaging I'd spent hours making in Canva, listed alongside global brands.
More on the Runner's World award →
What we make, and why it's built this way
Energy Pastilles — around 30g of carbohydrate per serving. Chews, not gel. Sold in bulk with a reusable pocket pouch, so you scoop what you need for the session instead of carrying a fistful of individual wrappers.
Power Fluids — carbohydrate and electrolyte drink mix you can make up to the concentration that suits you, because everyone's gut is different.
Three things guided all of it: deliver reliable carbohydrate energy, make fuelling easy and enjoyable while you're actually moving, and stop producing so much unnecessary packaging waste. Six gels on a four-hour ride works out at around six hundred wrappers a year from one athlete. There was no good reason to keep doing that.
How many carbs per hour do you actually need? →
Fuel for running →
Fuel for cycling →
Unfinished business
On 29 November 2026 I'm running the Florence Marathon, and I'm going to try to go under three hours.
My half marathon time says I should be capable of around 2:55. My marathon PB is 3:30. That gap has never been about fitness.
I'll be doing the whole thing on our own products — 90 to 120 grams of carbohydrate an hour, every long run between now and then, and on the day itself. I'm filming all of it, and I'll show you how it goes whether it works or not.
Berlin's been sitting there for a while. Time to settle it.
— Rob Lawrie, Founder
Aberdeen, Scotland
Fuel your next session properly
Trusted by runners, cyclists and endurance athletes. Winner of the Runner's World 2026 Sports Nutrition Award.
