Now Bathurst's Ash Corby and Brodie Scott are in the midst of their DownUnder CrossFit Championships campaign taking place at Wollongong across Friday through to Sunday.

Both of the CrossFit 2795 stars have put in gruelling hours to get the chance to face the nation's best, and they each have different stories to tell about how they got to where they are.

For Corby, a chance to return to the national level looked incredibly unlikely in the short term after fracturing her vertebrae during an accident on Boxing Day.

But that couldn't stop the Bathurst competitor - a former 25 finisher at the CrossFit Pacific Regionals - from hitting the comeback trail.

And she did so in a big way.

From the very first workout of this year's CrossFit Open Corby had kept herself well in the mix for qualification.

After getting through the opening rowing and wall ball workout relatively well Corby continued to exceed in a batch of exercises tailored to her strengths.

Corby finished inside with all-important Australian top 40 with a result of 27^th.

"By week three I was thinking 'I might actually have a chance at this'," Corby said.

"I definitely didn't expect to qualify. It was only a month and a week after surgery that I was doing the Open. My plan was just to RX all the workouts, which is to just do them as prescribed. It blew my mind that I could do that and still qualify," she said.

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"I'd broken my C6 and C7 vertebrae, which control the flexion and the extension of the elbow. At the moment I've still got no triceps strength. The nerve damage was quite severe and they had to remove a big bone fragment off the nerve.

"They fused the neck back together, so there's no problems there. It's just a bit of left arm weakness I'm struggling with so it's better than what could have happened."

Scott's story is one inspired by years of watching others stand where he would like to be.

Scott finished 40^th at the end of his workouts, against around 10,000 other competitors across the country, to enjoy his breakthrough moment.

"It's great for the gym to have two people going. Obviously we've had Ash going to regionals for the last two years and that I was itching to get out there with her," Scott said.

"I've really trained hard to try and get here. In 2017 I would have been around 130 spots away, then last year I was about 30 spots out and then this year I made up that difference and got in there quite comfortably in the end.

"Those first two years, while I was hopeful, it wasn't like I had a shocker. It was just where I happened to be at. That just made me more hungry to make it in the end and it's satisfying to finally make it onto that floor.

"I had a few good workouts to start. Out of the five I only had one that went really bad. On my fourth and fifth workouts I managed to jump back in front of a few people and that was really satisfying.

"I don't really have any big expectations for where I want to finish. The main thing for me is soaking up being out there."