Syncing Lightroom Classic to Lightroom Cloud but not vice versa

Throughout my photography career, I've exclusively used Lightroom Cloud. To this date, I have uploaded over 17,000 photos to the cloud. Recently, though, I have had to use Lightroom Classic for work because of the keywording features (I work in athletics). I want to be able to upload my final photos from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom Cloud. I turned on the sync collections feature and it worked, i synced my folders into Lightroom Cloud. The problem is it also attempted to download all 17,000 photos from my cloud onto my computer! Is there a way to ONLY sync Lightroom classic photos to the cloud version but not vice versa? I know I could always export the photos in classic and reupload them into the cloud, but I'd like to have my metadata, like adjustments, saved so I can go back and adjust them in the future. This always just requires another couple of steps versus just transferring automatically. I know this is a niche issue for someone using both platforms for different workflows, but does anyone have a fix?