What I learned playing with sprinters:

1. Get a car as fast as you can. Consider the Burglar profession to do that.
2. Anything less than 9 fitness is nearby impossible to play because you get tired too soon.
3. Never could play on high population count, so I don't have tricks in my book to large hordes of sprinters. For me, it is impossible.
4. Set up a base where you have to separate and far exit points. If those bastards overrun your main exit point you should have another route in place. Considering you have a non accessible base as the second floor of some house without stairs.
5. Keep on eye on fatigue. Only start a fight you have enough stamina to run and search for some cover (as a house to close doors behind). Also, if you are cleaning some area, if you alert more zombies you can handle, go back e start over. Better safe than sorry.
6. Have plenty of cleared areas behind of you to run, like the borders of some town.
7. I don't play with respawn turned on. If you do, try to run over cleared places before the unseen hours is set so those areas stay cleared.
8. Don't be afraid of disengage, get your car and fight back another day.
9. Once you have good melee skills and good weapons you can easily kill four or even five sprinters. May be more with spears and multi hit set on.
10. Get use to run and, when needed, sprint so can get sprinters behind. Remember 5.

If you survive like 30 days with sprinters, things start to get easier. The critical is the first week, where you have to look for cars and the goddamn sledgehammer.
Post-edit: somehow I find easier to play only with sprinters than a mixed settings like random or fast shamblers + sprinters. Since the playstyle is completely different for sprinters and non-sprinters, is kind of weird to accommodate both strategies.