Why I built The Morning Lap
I'm Tom O'Neill. I built The Morning Lap because every swim app I tried was guessing.
Generic effort levels. "Hard / Medium / Easy" prescriptions. Pace targets pulled from nowhere. None of it matched the way my coaches actually wrote my sets — anchored to a real test result, paced in Urbanchek zones, scaled to where I was that week.
So I built the version I wished existed.
- 15x USLA National Champion
- 6x Captain, US National Surf Lifesaving Team
- Bronze Medalist, 2016 World Surf Lifesaving Championships
- Former USMS National Record Holder — 6,000-Yard Postal Swim, 30–34 Age Group
- 2x World Championship Trials Qualifier — 10K Open Water
- Former Ohio State Varsity Swimmer
- 2010 Big Ten Team Champion
What that means in practice: every workout The Morning Lap builds for you is anchored to your recent swim time — not a generic threshold pace pulled from a textbook. The same way a real coach would write your set, scaled to where you are today, not where someone else is.
And the way a coach learns you over time — when a set didn't fit, they didn't bring it back. That's now in Premium. One tap after each swim, and the library narrows to the workouts that work for you.
If you're a masters swimmer who wants training that respects how you actually trained when you were faster, I built this for you.
— Tom
"As a lifelong competitive swimmer now training solo before and after work, I needed something to hold me accountable and keep me pushing at a high level. When I found The Morning Lap, I knew it was built for athletes like me — it helps me set meaningful goals, adapt my training to how I feel, and stay connected with a community of driven competitors who inspire me every day."Michael Faughnan — 3× USLA National Champion · Division I MAAC Conference Champion · Iona University Record Holder
"The Morning Lap has significantly improved my training and helped me stay motivated in terms of attaining my goals. The workouts are very specific to swimming ability, and offer a lot of variability in terms of training focus. It's applicable to a wide range of swimmers, including novice and highly competitive pool and open water swimmers. I highly recommend it!"Dr. Mike Barrows — Masters World Lifesaving Champion (40–44) · USLA National Team Coach 2014–2018 · Brown University '94