Bermuda Marathon Weekend champion Lauren Hagans Paquette is returning to defend her women’s half-marathon title next weekend.

The elite runner, who won in 2014, is heading back to Bermuda to race the event and also the KPMG Invitational Front Street Mile elite women’s race.

Paquette is likely to be one of the main contenders in the mile race, having achieved a string of personal bests in middle distance track races during the past year.

The 28-year-old United States athlete was third in last year’s Front Street Mile, which was won by compatriot Heather Kampf.

Last July, Paquette set a personal best for the distance when she ran 4min 30.73sec in Burnaby, Canada.

She also improved her best time for 800 metres, running 2:02.97 in Guelph, Canada, and ran another personal record for 3,000 metres in Gent, Belgium, where she clocked 9:11.87.

In June, Paquette had an impressive win in an American Milers Club 1,500 metres race in Indianapolis, where she ran the metric mile in 4:10.98.

Her winning time in last year’s HSBC Bermuda half-marathon was 1:18:08.