How much is too much distance too early?

I've run a 10 mile race where I saw what had to be ~8 year olds running with their dad on a bike following. I immediately thought that was too much. Focus on 5k for a while. That's a great time (better than I ever run), but theres a lot of room to grow which will be a very fulfilling journey. The mileage from working on that will naturally lead to longer events. But setting a target longer than 10k at this point is probably not healthy both mentally and physically for someone that age.

Hopefully this doesn’t sound too harsh and I’m just being 100% frank for the sake of giving a stranger good advice, but you should take a step back because you sound like you have the potential to be an overbearing dad and make your daughter hate you and it’s absolutely not worth it. Like other posters have said, have her do short distances. Have her compete in a bunch of sports and if she’s naturally talented at it then it won’t be any problem at all to catch up at CC in high school. I went from not ever running more than a mile in my life to running 5 miles in 30ish minutes over the course of a year because I’m naturally good at running and built for it, so just take things slow with her and legitimately let her do whatever she wants re: running for now. No need to push her into a half marathon at 10 years old because you think “she wants to”. Running distance is an inherently painful and not fun thing no matter how you cut it at a certain distance and training intensity and that’s not the feeling she should have towards running right now IMO. 2-3 hours of straight pain is different than 15-25 minutes of discomfort for a 10 year old kid. Kids don’t get the same pleasure out of long, difficult things like adults do yet and I think that’s important to point out

Again, it’s awesome that you and your daughter have something in common but I’m speaking from personal experience when I say to not fall into the “SHE wants to so I’m gonna make her train miserably every day to do something that’s generally hard and painful as frick on your body and mind so that she can be the best at 10” trap mindset. Stick to 3-5K and let her kill all the other kids in the fun distances and get a bunch of medals at easy distances and let the distance come as she gets older if she’s still interested.

Good luck, again I know that I have an abrasive typing style for the sake of making points but hopefully my advice helps and y’all enjoy doing this together for a lifetime

Being that she’s 10, I wouldn’t push too hard. Just make sure she’s having fun and consistently running. When she gets to high school and joins a track team, then you can push her hard.

Someone else mentioned it, I would also look to see if there is a junior track/running club in your area. Would help provide better age appropriate training and she might also make some running friends.

As a plus track clubs are significantly cheaper and less time-intensive as other youth sports like baseball, softball, soccer, etc.

Thanks for all of the responses. I did our 2nd 5k together this weekend. Small fundraiser event, but she placed 3rd overall and 1st female. Ran a 25 something. So much fun. I, well... finished.