Swimming: Clementine Monet dips her toes into open water swimming

But for the Tamworth City swimmer competing in her first competitive open water swim was like nothing she had ever experienced before.

"It was a 2.5km loop and we did that twice. The first loop there were so many people and I got hit so many times," Monet said.

"I got kicked in the face at the start, and my goggles filled up with water and I couldn't see anything for about 50m, and then my cap almost fell off."

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Far from deter the 16-year old though, she is now building towards the national championships due to be held later this month (Swimming Australia are set to make a decision on whether to go ahead or postpone on January 11) after swimming a qualifying time of 1:09:15.06 for the girls 15&O 5k at the "John Saliba'' Open Water Championships.

"That was really exciting," she said.

Her first competition open water swim, Monet wasn't really "expecting anything". She really just went in it "to have the experience of an open water swim and try something new".

The chaos was a stark contrast to the calmness of the pool that she is accustomed to but she loved it - warts and all.

"There's no turns, no walls, which I like better," she joked when asked about the main differences were.

"It's also really different just being alone and not having lane ropes."

"And also the distance - it's just so long."

In saying that, she does enjoy the long distance and has long favoured the distance events over the sprint events. Recently she has also started to get into more of the 400m and 800m races.

Even still the jumping into the open water does seem a stretch, especially for someone afraid of Sharks, although fortunately that isn't something she has had to worry about yet.

Monet's interest in open water swimming has been growing since a few years ago she and her family, and some family friends, started doing the Coffs Harbour Ocean Swim for a bit of fun.

"That kind of opened me up to open water swimming," she said.

"I also have a friend, who lives in Tamworth but goes to school at Knox, and he did an open water swim and qualified for nationals. So that really inspired me."

So how does one prepare for an open water swim when you live almost 300km from the beach? Lots of kilometres.

Also juggling training for a busy season in the pool, in the lead-up to the November event, Monet was doing the regular club training in the morning and then a few afternoons a week, and of a Saturday morning, an endurance session.

"We'd try and get up to, on Saturday mornings 6ks and throughout the week about 5k," she said.

Other than that it was a lot of mental preparation.

Monet said it is a direction she would like to explore with her swimming.

"I'd love to do more swims and it's good to balance that with also pool swimming, something different so I really enjoyed it and hopefully I can do more," she said.

She was to compete in the state open championships last month but they were cancelled.

It would have been a big effort, coming two days after she wrapped up what was a busy State Age Championships program after competing in the 100 and 200m butterfly, 100 and 200m breaststroke, 400m freestyle and four relays.