Lowestoft triathlete Joe Skipper has targeted breaking the British Ironman record after his impressive second-placed finish in the Ironman UK event in Bolton last month.

Skipper hopes to build on the best result of his career so far to break new ground in what is widely considered one of the most gruelling endurance series around.

Skipper completed the 2.4m swim, 112m bike ride and 26.2m run in eight hours, 48 minutes and 12 seconds and hopes to improve on this before the end of the year.

'I would love to break the British record (held by Paul Amey in a time of 8-01:29) and with the progress I've made this year I think that's a possibility,' he said.

'I'm going to be doing Challenge Weymouth in September which is another big one and then Ironman in Barcelona, which is a fast course so I think I could break it there.'

Skipper's result in Bolton didn't come as any surprise to the 26-year-old, who often trains with Norwich Running Club and, early into the running phase, thoughts of victory even passed his mind.

'I knew it was coming because of what I had been doing in training,' he said.

'In training I've been consistently hitting some really good times.

'I think the key to my result was on the bike phase.

'I had a power output that I was going to stick to on the bike.

'I don't normally run to a power output in the race and it's quite hard because you can see people pulling away from you, but you know if you're going to stick to it that you've got to let them go and be confident you will be able to reel them back in.

'It worked well for me.

'In the run I really thought I could win – the leader was walking up one of the hills so I knew I would catch him and I thought I would be able to catch the second-placed guy (Cyril Viennot) as well, but I'm really pleased with second.'

Skipper is grateful to his sponsors Pedal Revolution and mailbigfile.

If any companies are interested in sponsoring Joe he can be contacted at joeskipper@hotmail.co.uk.