With the city of Montrose gearing up for the USA Pro Cycling Challenge next week, an organizing committee in Grand Junction was dealt some bad news for next year’s race. A committee had applied to the National Parks Service in the hopes of holding a stage of next year’s race at the Colorado National Monument. The National Parks Service denied the request stating that the Parks Service doesn’t cater to for-profit events, among other reasons. Locally, we are gearing up for the race next Tuesday and there will be major road closures that morning. Starting at 10:00AM Tuesday morning parts of the race route will be closed including parts of Townsend, Main and Niagara. The whole route will be closed by 11:00AM with the race starting at 11:25AM. There will be detours and diversions for traffic around the race route.