Workout equipment is starting to get a bit funny.

Not only do treadmills have hookups for iPods and cable TV, they have USB slots for uploading your previous workouts and these funky looking workout animations for while you are running. But I'm not all that surprised by the treadmills. What I am writing about are these new exercise bikes my school has installed.

This isn't grandpa's road bike bolted to a stand off the ground, this looks nothing like a real bicycle in any sense of the word.

But these stationary bikes have been like that for years, but what got me today was the big old LCD screen on the front of it. When you first start out, it gives you a 3D video game style animation of bicyclists. The cool part is, it's playable sort of. The handlebars of the machine pivot and when you moved them, the bicyclist on the screen turns.

There are different modes on it where you can race against fellow bikers from off-road trails to a road race on the streets of some city.

What really got my attention was a "game" on the machine where you are riding in a medieval contraption and you collected these colored coins and chase down similar colored dragons for a set amount of time. It's sort of an open-map where you can ride up and down grassy hills, over small bridges and down small dirt paths chasing these dragons. When the time is up, your points are tallied up with your heart rate (which is monitored by metal strips on the handle bars throughout the workout) and calories burned to give you a score. I didn't play around long enough to find any high score list....but one day...

The bike in question? The Expresso exercise bike: