Here's what I do and by no means am I the standard by which all should be judged but, it does seem to work for my athletes. I pick 6 weeks out from our National meet and begin to lower volume but pick up intensity. Rest between intervals becomes irrelevant as opposed to completing the workouts at designated paces. For example: I have 4x800 assigned today for my men's mid-distance crew. This is at 1500 pace and the rest in between is as much as they need to complete the next one. Also, rest days are REST days. At this point, we're not going to get any better aerobically so we really just jog on days we aren't on the track.
Again, this seems to work every year for my athletes. They always feel really fresh come race day and, after about 2-3 weeks of this, their times really start to come down.