I used to do the same thing – create a page with the same name as a category to use as a faux index page.
I think I used this No Category Base plugin to remove the /category/ bit from the URL. (I think it was this plugin.)
[…] this plugin will completely remove the mandatory ‘Category Base’ from your category permalinks ( e.g. myblog.com/category/my-category/ to myblog.com/my-category/ ).