UPDATED: Charity Beer Night - 8 April

This year I’m running the London Marathon and raising money for Evelina Children's Hospital. In March 2013, my week-old nephew Lucas was rushed to Evelina where he spent a week in intensive care. The hospital saved his life and now I’m raising money to say thank you (I raised money for the charity in 2013 when I ran the Paris Marathon – here’s a blog about that).

I know people often ask for charity donations and seldom does the donater get anything back for their cash apart from the warmth of knowing they’re helping out a charity. I wanted to organise something that actually gives people delicious things for their kindness and their cash, so I’m fundraising in the best way that I know – drinking beer.

On Friday 8 April, at The Kernel Brewery, I’m organising a one-off beer night. There’ll be a range of amazing beers on tap and all the money raised from the tickets (apart from the small booking fee) will go to charity – breweries are donating the beer, The Kernel are offering their bar and the staff are working for free (if you’d like to help pour beer on the night then let me know!). I’m working on the full beer list and I’ll announce that nearer the time, but be assured that I want the best beer line-up that I can get.

UPDATE: Here are confirmed breweries sending beer: The Kernel, Vocation, Cloudwater, Gipsy Hill, Chorlton, Firestone Walker, Boulevard, Duvel, UBrew (I'm brewing a one-off beer!) and SeaCider. More updates soon...!

The ticket is £20 and that gets you entry and five glasses of draft beer (they are 2/3-pint glasses). If you want to drink more then all other beers are paid for with cash donations on the night (just respect that this is a charity event and don’t take the piss!) There are only 150 tickets, so get them quickly.

There will be a limited amount of cider but no wine or spirits. Grill My Cheese are cooking outside - these cost extra. Doors open at 5pm and will close promptly at 10pm.

Get your Charity Beer Festival Tickets here!

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That’s not all… As well as this beer festival, I’m also doing a London Beer Run. On 2 April, a group of beer-loving runners will be doing a 20-ish mile run around London, passing as many breweries as possible on the way (should be around 20 breweries).

If you would like to donate but can't attend the event, then the fundraising page is here, which is also the link for the London Beer Run fundraising.

Today Lucas is a wonderful, crazy, hilarious little (almost) three-year-old and we have Evelina to thank for that. I’m hoping to raise as much money as I can for a charity that means so much to me and my family.

These are my marathon trainers. When my legs hurt, when I can't face another lap around Victoria Park, when I don't want to get up at 6am to go to the gym, I look down at my battered feet and I see the reason why I'm running.