The only way to buff athletics without breaking the fragile melee balance would be to only increase its effect on the max running speed of your character, not the acceleration. This way once you're up to speed you can more easily catch those pesky archers. However, in order to avoid buffing kiting ranged there would definitely need to be some further tweaking done, like not letting them drop their heavy ammo or something. Really I think the best thing to do would just let people move faster when carrying a shield.