The default sprinting button was a pain to get used to since it is an awkward angle, but I didn't have a better choice in mind. Due to sprinting being private, it does kill the most logical way of handling it. I'm not sure if it might be possible to keep a normal keybind from toggling it back off on release though.
As for changing the map pins, Harven's addon allows creating new custom map pins and perhaps it could allow reskinning existing ones?
http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info3...nsMarkers.html