As a console player, having to hold down a button to sprint is always awful.

Also, I would be surprised if the game even can make it into a dynamic gauge instead of a skill with a cooldown.

On the assumption that they can't, I think the answer would be adding more stacks of sprint as you level up – either a simple second stack at level X or shorten the timer a little and add more stacks to compensate. (At very least, give the "more short bursts" variant to gatherers.)

"Sprint until you stop or perform an action" would also be a good variant.